Via Paul Constant, here’s the Brad Blog report:
Firm owned by notorious GOP operative Nathan Sproul, accused of destroying Democratic registration forms in years past, hired ‘at request of RNC’, still operating in several key swing states…
The Republican Party of Florida’s top recipient of 2012 expenditures, a firm by the name of Strategic Allied Consulting, was just fired on Tuesday night, after more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration forms were discovered to have been turned in by the group to the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections.The firm appears to be another shell company of Nathan Sproul, a longtime, notorious Republican operative, hired year after year by GOP Presidential campaigns, despite being accused of shredding Democratic voter registration forms in a number of states over several past elections.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Strategic Allied Consulting has been paid some $667,000 this year by the FL GOP, presumably to run its voter registration campaigns in the state. That number, however, does not account for another identical payment made in August. The Palm Beach Post is reporting tonight that the firm received “more than $1.3 million” from the Republican Party of Florida “to register new voters.”
The firm is not only tied to the FL GOP, but also to the Mitt Romney Campaign, which hired Sproul as a political consultant late last year, despite years of fraud allegations against his organizations in multiple states.
Moreover, the firm is also reportedly operating similar voter registration operations on behalf of the Republican Party, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in a number of key battleground states this year, including North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado. Strategic Allied has recently taken steps to hide their ownership by Sproul’s notorious firm, Sproul & Associates…
Do read the whole thing.
I’ll admit my first thought was that animal shelters and rescues groups keep carefully updated “Do Not Adopt” lists of individuals known to be hoarders, abusers, and/or generally unfit to have pets. You’d think political organizations would have an equivalent “Do Not Hire” list for people previously convicted of voter fraud and other chicanery… unless, of course, that’s exactly the kind of behavior the GOP/RNC/Romney campaign is hiring Sproul to commit?
billgerat
Does this really surprise anyone?
TooManyJens
I was gonna say.
Ruckus
They are the people we feared they were. We should have feared them more. That way at least we could keep lists so at least we know who the background players are.
Remember projection? If republicans are protesting voter fraud it’s because they think we are doing the same thing they are. In a world view that disdains the truth it doesn’t matter what the facts really are.
Pinkamena Panic
The entire Republican playbook: Projection.
Mnemosyne
Completely OT, but things like this happen to me so rarely that I have to share:
We’re getting ready to take our annual trip up to Santa Barbara and made reservations at our favorite inn up there. We’ve been staying there at least once a year for about 8 years now.
So tonight I get home and there’s a message on the answering machine from the inn saying that they accidentally double-booked our room, so they’re going to upgrade us to a cottage at the same price because we’re long-time customers, is that okay?
Um, YEAH, IT’S OKAY!
DPS
I wonder if there has ever before been a political movement entirely based on the premise of projecting onto others things that you’re constantly doing yourself.
Apart from fascism, I mean.
sfinny
@Mnemosyne: Good for you. Enjoy the cottage.
Mnemosyne
@sfinny:
I had to call G before I called them back to make sure it was okay with him, and he had the same reaction I did. :)
It’s been a tough summer for him (work’s been rough and his father died after a two-year struggle with a brain tumor) so I’m really happy this happened out of the blue since he’s really been looking forward to this trip.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: Nice. Have you ever been to the Cold Spring Tavern? It’s worth it, at least once.
Violet
@Mnemosyne: Congratulations on the upgrade! It’s fun when things like that happen. That inn looks really nice. Enjoy your holiday.
Mnemosyne
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
We haven’t, but I’ll add it to my Yelp bookmarks. We usually end up arriving in SB, parking the car at the inn, and then walking the whole weekend until it’s time to head home, because SB is the kind of place where you can do that.
@Violet:
G’s been saying since we made the reservation that all he wants to do is check in and not have to leave for any reason other than meals, so I think this will facilitate that.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: I do really like Santa Barbara a lot. I have friends who live in Carpinteria, and go down there to visit them fairly often.
Also, if you like British artery-clogging food, there’s an authentic chippy on State Street that is worth it.
Mnemosyne
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
We may end up saving Cold Spring for when my mother-in-law and brother-in-law come out to visit in February. My BIL always drags us to every old-school steakhouse in the Oak Park area when we go visit them in Chicago, and Cold Spring looks like the kind of place he will LOVE. Especially if they have a good martini.
Have you ever been to Anacapa Brewing Company in Ventura? Really good food and (according to G) really good beer.
Mnemosyne
I’ll also put in a plug for a place in SB that Yutsano recommended we try after he saw it on the Food Network — Stella Mare’s. French and barbeque, at a great location right by the bird sanctuary.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Mnemosyne: I have not been there, I will take a note of it. Ventura is about the same distance from Carpinteria as Santa Barbara. Mission San Buenaventura is very nice.
Joel
@Mnemosyne: I got bumped from a christmas flight while traveling with my wife to visit her relatives (we booked through different agencies because of deal availability). Anyways, this meant that we were going to be potentially separated.. during holiday travel. Ominous tidings.
Anyways, American Airlines did us a huge solid. We show up at the gate and after some very friendly discussion, we end up in first class, sitting next to each other.
Now that was unexpected. Never before, never since.
Another Halocene Human
I feel all gauche making an on-topic post now, but I just want to express my hope that the state charges the Republican Party the full $5000 for each fraudulent form. The schools could really use that half a million dollars.
They are supposed to track the serial numbers on the voter registration forms now. I wonder if Sproul was faking the cover sheets too.
CaliCat
Obama will win despite these sumbitches. So fucking sick of this crap.
kindness
Well you hae to see things from the Republicans point of view. Being a skullerous dirty dog in assisting Republican domination via fraud is a point of honor and a big plus on their resume to Repubs.
Liberty!
satby
Examiner.com is reporting a similar voter fraud scam in El Paso (I think ). Girl prescreening voters and only registering ones who say they’re voting R. And she said she was working for the county clerk but they say the local GOP. They’re probably doing it everywhere.
Randy P
@satby: If you’re talking about the girl in the Safeway, I believe that was in Colorado.
I think it’s the shredding of registration forms that infuriates me more than anything. That’s a violation of Federal law. Doesn’t that law have any teeth at all?
ET
I would hazard a guess that they don’t think this is fraud. First off, it is them doing it and only “others” commit voter fraud. Second, they likely think this is just aggressive efforts to counter the fraud they see benefiting the other side – all’s fair isn’t it?
PaulW
It’s not voter registration fraud if Republicans do it.
I thought you Balloon-Juicers knew that already.
Always blame ACORN. They’re the real monsters.
PaulW
@Another Halocene Human:
Well, I dunno if having Rick “Fraud IS My Middle Name” Scott and State AG Pam Bondi anywhere involved with the investigation is going to lead to serious charges…
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.)
@Another Halocene Human:
What I’m wondering, and if any lawyers are here, maybe they can tell me, but this kind of thing, shredding forms, weeding out Democrats when you register people, wouldn’t that be a federal crime? I’d guess it is, but if not, then why isn’t it? If it is, what does somebody get for being convicted? How often does the federal government prosecute this? Seems like some really mean, but fair, prosecutions of these shitstains would go a long way in getting them to stop doing this shit.
And on that score, but more broadly, I’d like to see some big Congressional investigations into this (that is, if we keep the Senate and maybe take back the House). People like us know about all this, since we follow the news and read the best blogs like this one and watch Rachel Maddow; but I’d guess that millions of people blithely go through life with no glue this is going on. But it’s a big deal. It’s about the biggest deal there can be in a free society. Working to keep eligible people from voting is obscene. Every two years–every two years–we learn of some shit in one state or other, or sometimes in many states, where one party (guess which) sends out fake flyers meant to send people to the wrong polling place or that say that the Democrats have this or that race so in the bag that voters shouldn’t bother voting, or that in some other way seek to steer voters wrong.
Every two years. And, much of the time, some asshole gets convicted of this, but they only ever get a few years in jail. But, I don’t know, would there be some way for prosecutors to tie some of these things together and go after them for conspiracy or racketeering? You know that Karl Rove and other dickwads like him are behind all this in some way. Why can’t, or why don’t investigators, prosecutors, congressmen and senators and anybody else with jurisdiction try to tie all this together and take this on seriously?
I’m no organizer. I have ADD (the inattentive kind), and I couldn’t organize a lemonade stand for my daughter without screwing it up so badly that we’d both end up in Turkish prisons by the day’s end. But others here are. Why couldn’t we use this blog to begin a movement to put pressure on Congress to investigate this in the next Congress?
Think of the publicity. The Kefauver Hearings were before I was born, but I know about them; I don’t know much, but I know that they went after the Mafia back in the 60’s–or maybe the 50’s. Who knows much of anything about estes Kefauver today? Yet he still has some fame because of those hearings. Every senator wants to be remembered. This would be a great platform for that. What Democrat wouldn’t want to be remembered as the guy who brought down Karl Rove and made our elections clean and honest? You could make a real run at the presidency with something like that on your record. But I don’t hear anything about this. What could we here do to get something like this off the ground? What would we have to do?
I’m willing to pitch in for something like this. I’d love to help bring this about, even if it’s only in a small way, but I wouldn’t have the first clue how to go about it. I don’t want to boast, but I’ve had people here tell me that I can churn out some good writing. In college, the teacher who taught a class on Shakespeare told me I could be a professional writer. So I can at least do that. But I couldn’t run a movement. Somebody who knows how to organize things needs to be on board with this, too. Is there anybody here who would like to help undertake this?
RSR
I saw numbers that said $1.2M for 304 regestrations. That’s about $4k each. Even if they were all legitimate, that cost is a skimming red flag. Yet, voters choose republicans for fiscal ‘prudence.’
MrSnrub
@satby: That’s in El Paso County, which is Colorado Springs, CO.
Zippity
A commenter on this story at TPM said that they registered at a job fair in Orlando. The person said they only got paid if it was R or I. The registration never showed up at the Clerk’s office, so they just registered again. This should definitely be prosecuted.
Bokonon
Satby and MrSnrub: note that the Colorado GOP has apparently hired this same company. And this partisan voter registration drive happens to dovetail pretty neatly with the voter roll purges that the Colorado Secretary of State has been doing (which disproportionately hits Democrats).
Where there is smoke, there is fire.
And I suspect that in Colorado … and Ohio … and Pennsylvania … and Florida … and other states where the GOP is churning the voter rolls … the entire goal is to make a close election a CONTESTED election. Where all the provisional ballots and confusion are in the Democratic column.
J R in WVa
And (of course) now we know why Republican’ts were so sure there was voter fraud – they’re doing it again!!!
I agree with all above that wish someone would RICO the creeps and put them under a jail for decades. There are very few crimes more serious than bringing doubt to the fundamental system of government in a – kinda – democracy. I would go so far as to say only crimes with lots of bodies strewn around.
And they can be so positive that there is voter fraud, and propose all kinds of draconian voter-inhibiting BS laws that do nothing to inhibit their voter fraud. Police road stops on roads leading to minority polling places. Arbitrarily removing good citizens (we know this because they’re registered to vote!) from the registration rolls!
Republicans are a conspiracy to illegally control the government – if they were Muslims they would be sent to Git-mo, but because they’re felonious old white men they get to try again next year.
It’s a good thing that I can purge myself of some bile through commenting on good Democratic blogs like this one. It’s better for my health not to bottle it up.
We’re going for a mid-week escape to Baltimore Inner Harbor next week – meeting wife’s oldest friend, college room-mate, accountant. Big fun! That’ll be good too…
Get out and vote as soon as you can!
Howlin Wolfe
@Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (Mumphrey, et al.): It may be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a state crime, too. The fed crimes do not necessarily pre-empt the state ones. The defendant can be liable for both.
In the absence of action from federal prosecutors, the state can take action.
What I’m more curious about is if the WaPo is going to have a come-to-jeebus hand-wringing moment about how they need to pay more attention to left-wing complaints about voter registration fraud, like it did with the ACORN frame-up. Only this isn’t a frame-up.