Thread: 10 Fla. counties report suspicious GOP voter sign-ups

10 Fla. counties report suspicious GOP voter sign-ups

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A woman votes in Jupiter, Fla., in 2008. Officials announced this week they are examining 106 questionable voter registrations in Florida's Palm Beach County. (Photo: File photo by J. Pat Carter, AP)

6:58PM EST September 29. 2012 - At least 10 Florida counties have identified possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the state's Republican Party, election officials said today.

Problems first emerged earlier this week in Palm Beach County with forms turned in by Strategic Allied Consulting, which the Republican National Committee (RNC) paid $3.1 million to register voters in Florida and six other swing states. Palm Beach prosecutors are examining 106 voter registration forms submitted by one Strategic Allied Consulting worker, some with apparently forged signatures.

Read what Strategic Allied says about the allegations and its "quality control."

Thursday, the RNC severed its ties to the Virginia firm and filed a voter-fraud complaint.

Florida GOP spokesman Brian Burgess told the Associated Press today, "We are doing what we can to find out how broad the scope is."

The Los Angeles Times reports that Florida election officials have identified suspicious voter registrations turned in by the state GOP in nine other counties -- Lee, Bay, Clay, Santa Rosa, Escambia, Okaloosa, Pasco, Miami-Dade and Duval.

Santa Rosa County elections officials found 100 problematic forms out of about 400 turned in by the state Republican Party. Most did not include Social Security numbers. Others had date of births that did not match the names. Some listed fake house numbers.

"It was that flagrant," elections supervisor Ann W. Bodenstein told the paper. "In no way did they look genuine."

"Anyone with any sense would have known there was something wrong," she said. "Most were changes in current registrations filed in the names of real voters, but signatures were spelled differently than the applicants' names."

Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, told the Times the the number of suspicious applications was unusual.

"There might be an occasional one, but I don't think we've ever had this number of counties that have had this number of cases all at the same time," she said.

Strategic Allied Consulting was also paid to work in Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. Republican officials in Ohio and Wisconsin had not yet paid the company money the RNC gave them for Strategic Allied's services.

The company is run by an Arizona-based conservative, Nathan Sproul, a former head of the state GOP. The Times writes that he "has been dogged by charges in the past that his employees destroyed Democratic registrations. No charges were ever filed."

In an interview Thursday, the Times writes, he told the paper that the Palm Beach problems were the result of one individual and that his firm had offered to help elections officials in other counties identify problems.

The Florida Democratic Party wants election officials to "revoke" the state GOP's ability to register voters. The deadline is Oct. 9 for the Nov. 6 election.

10 Fla. counties report suspicious GOP voter sign-ups

This smells like an obvious Democrat setup job.

Originally Posted by dogpile

This smells like an obvious Democrat setup job.

It's real:
http://www.alipac.us/f12/gop-fires-v...ations-264572/

The well is being poisoned, close race between Obama and Romney will be followed by charges and allegation of abuse increasing the chances of wide spread civil unrest in America. The stages are being set!

W

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

The well is being poisoned, close race between Obama and Romney will be followed by charges and allegation of abuse increasing the chances of wide spread civil unrest in America. The stages are being set!

W

Obama has already hired teams of lawyers in the event he should lose. The results of the election will be tied up for months if not years.

In other news, 50 states report voter fraud by dead Democrats.

More suspicious voter forms found in Florida

After reports of irregularities, state GOP fires company hired to register people

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

updated 9/29/2012 10:58:39 PM ET2012-09-30T02:58:39

MIAMI — The number of Florida counties reporting suspicious voter registration forms connected to Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm hired by the state Republican Party to sign up new voters, has grown to 10, officials said, as local election supervisors continue to search their forms for questionable signatures, addresses or other identifiers.

After reports of suspicious forms surfaced in Florida, the company — owned by Nathan Sproul, who has been involved in voter registration efforts since at least the 2004 presidential election — was fired last week by the state Republican Party and the Republican National Committee. The party had hired it to conduct drives in Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia.

In Colorado, a young woman employed by Strategic Allied was shown on a video outside a store in Colorado Springs recently telling a potential voter that she wanted to register only Republicans and that she worked for the county clerk’s office. The woman was fired, said Ryan Call, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

The Florida Division of Elections has forwarded the reports of possible fraud to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for investigation. Prosecutors in some affected counties are also investigating. It is unclear how many forms have been forwarded, in all: in Palm Beach County, the election supervisor found 106 suspicious forms, but the number in several other counties is far lower.

Bay County has found eight suspicious forms with the Republican Party registration code connected to Strategic Allied. In Pasco County, three have been found.

The state Republican Party, which paid the company $1.3 million to register voters here, said it would file an elections fraud complaint against Strategic Allied, which is based in Tempe, Ariz.

Mr. Sproul was once the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. In 2004, his voter registration project was investigated by the Justice Department and the attorneys general in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon after widespread allegations of fraud surfaced, but no charges were brought.

Questions are now being raised about how the company’s employees were paid to register voters.

Mary Blackwell, a volunteer for the League of Women Voters in Okaloosa County, said she was registering voters this month at Northwest Florida State College. Sitting nearby was a man who said he was registering voters for the Republican Party of Florida. The man told her he received $12 an hour but had to bring in at least 10 forms to get paid.

Paul Lux, the election supervisor for Okaloosa County, a Republican who is still combing through registration forms in his office, said he was told by several “concerned citizens,” including Ms. Blackwell, that the employees were being paid for the number of forms they brought back.

In Florida, it is illegal to pay someone per registration form.

“I told my friends in the party then that paying people to do this was a bad idea, and it almost inevitably leads to problems,” Mr. Lux said. “Unfortunately, I was not proven wrong.”

Fred Petti, a lawyer for Strategic Allied, said the employees were paid only by the hour, with no quota attached. He added that they also were instructed to register anyone from any political party, not just the Republican Party.

Previous investigations of Mr. Sproul’s operations focused on efforts to register only Republicans or allegations that Democratic forms were torn up. Mr. Petti also said that Mr. Sproul cooperated with the Palm Beach County election supervisor to find out who was at fault and has offered to do the same with other election supervisors.

RNC cuts ties with firm over voter registration allegations
In Palm Beach County, one person was responsible for the fraudulent forms, officials said. Mr. Petti said he does not yet know how widespread the problem is in other counties.

Election supervisors said they have come across forms with handwriting that did not match previous registration forms, bogus addresses and other identifiers like driver’s license numbers that appeared to be invalid. But in other cases, the forms were just incomplete, which does not constitute fraud.

“Until we see what the cards are, it’s hard for us to comment,” Mr. Petti said.

Mark Anderson, the Bay County supervisor, said he has found eight questionable forms in his county, but he is looking for more. The forms had either unchecked boxes for party affiliation or signatures that looked different from previous ones. He said he had also received calls from voters who said they had not changed their party affiliation, although it appeared they had. “I don’t believe there is going to be massive numbers,” Mr. Anderson said.

Election supervisors are able to pinpoint the group responsible for the questionable forms because of a 2011 state law that tightened rules on voter registration groups. The law, which sparked lawsuits and controversy, requires groups to register with the state and have their registration number on the forms they distribute.

A provision that required groups to turn in registration forms within 48 hours was struck down in court this year.

“The Republican Legislature was beaten up pretty badly, partially by myself,” Mr. Lux said. “But they seem to have been doing something to improve the process.”

This article, "More Suspicious Voter Forms Are Found," first appeared in The New York Times.

NYT: More suspicious voter forms found in Fla. - politics - The New York Times | NBC News

It takes the attention away from 170 ACORN offices that are set up and running.

Posted on Sunday, 09.30.12

Politics

Republicans play defense over voter registration fraud

Marc Caputo The Miami Herald
By Marc Caputo
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com
MiamiHerald.com/columnists

President Barack Obama has received unexpected help from the unlikeliest of quarters: The Republican National Committee.

Devoted to bashing Obama, the RNC gave the president’s reelection campaign a political contribution of sorts by insisting that state parties, such as Florida’s, hire a vendor that’s now under investigation for voter-registration fraud by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in as many as 10 counties involving at least 220 suspect forms.

Remember all that talk from Republicans about voter fraud?
Well, it ain’t just for ACORN anymore.

Now, instead of being on offense against Obama, Republicans are playing defense over voter-registration fraud. Some organized Republican voter-registration drives have virtually ground to a halt as Republicans fired the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, in seven battleground states.

It’s such a mess that the Republican Party of Florida has filed an elections complaint against the Strategic Allied Consulting, which then turned around and bashed…. The Republican Party of Florida.

“When the Republican Party of Florida chose to make likely libelous comments about our effort and stated that the Republican National Committee suggested us as the vendor, the RNC was put in the unenviable position of ending a long-term relationship for the sake of staying focused on the election,” a company statement said this week.

“While we wish their comments yesterday would have more accurately addressed the situation, we understand the logic of ending distractions and winning elections. We wish our friends there nothing but success going forward,” the statement said.

The Florida Democratic Party couldn’t have paid for such a result: The RPOF bashing an RNC vendor that turns around and bashes RPOF for slander.

Way to go, RNC.

In all, Strategic Allied Consulting earned at least $3 million from the RNC nationwide for voter-registration drives. In Florida, the state party received $1.3 million from the RNC to pay Strategic.

The contracts have been cancelled and, in Florida, Republicans now have to come up with a new way to add new voters ahead of the Oct. 9 registration deadline for the general election.

Republicans this year in Florida have added about 46,000 new voters to the rolls. Democrats have added 220,000 — and a good deal of that work was done by the Obama campaign and unpaid volunteers, Democrats say.

Democrats now lead Republicans by 443,166 active registered Florida voters. Expect that lead to grow.

The numbers are instructive. They indicate that Republicans felt the need to do something to boost their ranks and make it look like there was enthusiasm for their party as well.

The chances that Republicans wanted to create phony voters to fraudulently cast ballots are unlikely. It’s almost impossible to do, and it could result in a felony charge.

The fraud, to the degree there was any, was probably committed by part-time workers who wanted to collect a paycheck and do little work or by zealots who wanted to show Republicans gaining strength on the ground.

Of the Strategic Allied forms, at least 220 registration records are suspect.

In some, signatures, birthdays or addresses didn’t always match. Multiple forms were filled out in the same handwriting. A dead person might have been signed up. Party registrations were changed, sometimes to Republican.

“We checked to see if the reports of possible fraud were legally sufficient and they were,” said Chris Cate, spokesman for Florida’s elections division. “This is now a matter for FDLE.”

In many ways, it sounds like a repeat of what happened in 2008 when the group ACORN hired scores of part-time workers who submitted phony voter registration cards throughout Florida.

Thanks to ACORN’s efforts, and that of the Obama campaign, Democrats wound up with a huge registration lead over Republicans: 657,775. Obama won the election by 236,450, 2.8 percentage points.

But there’s a big difference between the apparent voter-registration fraud that happened under ACORN and that under Strategic Allied Consulting: ACORN reported its own people at the time.

This latest case was blown open by Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher, a former Democratic state representative, who noticed 106 questionable registration forms.

Bucher turned it over to the state, The Palm Beach Post reported it Tuesday, and soon 9 other counties reported irregularities with registration cards submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting.

Like ACORN then, Strategic is blaming a few rogue employees, who seem to be cropping up in more and more counties.

Another irony: Strategic was spotted because the Republican-led Legislature passed an anti-fraud bill in 2011 that made it easier to track third-party groups registering new voters.

In Okaloosa County, a League of Women Voters activist complained to the local supervisor of elections about the work of a Strategic employee, who boasted that he only had voter registration forms of Republicans and independents. In Colorado, a hidden video captured one Strategic employee trying to register only Republicans.

Strategic is a new company, founded by Arizona’s Nathan Sproul, who did about $70,000 worth of signature-gathering work for Mitt Romney this year.

Another company of Sproul’s, in 2004, was accused in Nevada, Arizona and Oregon of elections irregularities, including allegations that employees destroyed the newly collected registration forms of Democratic voters to keep them off the rolls.

“In each of the three investigations conducted by four law enforcement agencies, we were given a clean bill of health,” the company noted on its website.

Good enough for the RNC.

And it’s certainly pretty good for the Obama campaign.

Republicans play defense over voter registration fraud - Florida - MiamiHerald.com

Anyone notice how the liberal media is attempting to spin this into something to equal the ACORN debacle?

Jarrett's contingency plan A: Plan B: Martial Law.