A major element of the Republican National Committee’s overall attempt to game the 2012 elections by trying to affect who gets to vote and who does not, has just been stopped dead in its tracks.
Along with it, a criminal election fraud complaint has now reportedly been filed with law enforcement in the state of Florida against a Republican firm, owned by a paid Mitt Romney consultant, which was hired by the GOP to carry out partisan voter registration operations in at least five battleground states.
Millions of dollars were spent on the aborted effort by the GOP over the last two months — their largest single expenditure in several of the states where the scheme was in full tilt — to seek out Romney supporters only, and sign them up to vote.
The strategy resulted in (or included) fraudulent registration forms collected by the firm and then submitted in Florida by the state GOP with voter addresses, signatures and party affiliations changed. Election officials in the state have told The BRAD BLOG that they fear the scheme could result in the disenfranchisement of a still-unknown number of otherwise legal voters, and they are taking extraordinary measures to try and contain the potential damage as they attempt to work through more than 45,000 new and updated registrations submitted by the GOP and verify their legitimacy.
The fraudulent voter registration forms have so far been discovered in “at least 11” FL counties at this hour, all submitted by the state Republican Party and collected by the RNC’s top voter registration firm, a shell company formed in June called Strategic Allied Consulting, as owned by a notorious GOP operative named Nathan Sproul.
On Thursday night, the RNC finally fired the firm which they’d paid more than $3 million dollars over the past two months alone, for voter registration work in at least five key battleground states, and “Get Out the Vote” efforts in at least two more.
But, despite the efforts by the RNC and Strategic Allied Consulting, run secretly by Romney’s paid political consultant, the 2012 GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, which The BRAD BLOG initially reported late last Tuesday night as it began to break, is not over yet. Not by a long shot…
National Scandal
It took several days for the story to go national, and for the RNC to eventually take action in firing the company that Sproul says he was specifically asked to create for them, but only after the Republican Party of Florida, and then the North Carolina GOP fired the firm first. The state parties say they had hired the company “at the request” of the RNC. They fired Strategic after allegedly fraudulent and purposely changed voter registration forms turned in by the group emerged in other counties beyond Palm Beach County, FL where the Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher initially discovered and then turned in over 100 “questionable” forms to the State Attorney last Monday.
The story has been moving quickly over the past 24 to 48 hours, even as the RNC and Strategic have been trying, with the initial uncritical help of the AP and others in the media, to downplay the scandal as the work of just “one individual”.
Now that “suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms” turned in by the Republican Party and Sproul have been found in “at least 11 counties” in Florida, as reported by the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, their “one bad apple” talking point has fallen to pieces.
Similarly laughable is the RNC’s claim that once the fraudulent registrations emerged they acted “boldly” or that they have a “zero tolerance policy” for such things. Their own admissions in this matter, as well as Sproul’s, highlight how absurd those positions are. But more on that in a minute.
Another matter we’ve been looking at, is the claim that this scandal is contained to only five battleground states — Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado — where Strategic Allied Consulting is known to have been operating before being fired. There is evidence, however, that they and/or other Sproul companies, may still be operating in other states, such as California and Oregon, and that the specific type of rather offensive registration work they were doing — lying to potential registrants and only offering Romney supporters the opportunity to register to vote — is not necessarily their own strategy, but that of the entire Republican National Committee and the Romney campaign.
And then there’s the matter of the hypocrisy of how Republicans and their media outlets, such as Fox “News” and the rest of the Rightwing media are now trying to pretend that this entire matter isn’t happening at all. Yes, the very same outlets who all went wall-to-wall in 2008, and beyond, in claiming (inaccurately) that ACORN was doing what this GOP group appears to actually have done, are now going out of their way to ignore the scandal entirely.
As mentioned, there’s a lot still moving on this story, many threads we’re looking into and pulling at in the background, but here are some of the latest developments, including stuff we know, and stuff we still don’t…
Criminal Complaint Filed in FL
After some terrible reporting on this originally by the AP, in which they simply took whatever they were told by the RNC and Strategic Allied Consulting and reported it uncritically, they’ve finally noticed there is much more going on here.
“What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has now spread statewide,” AP’s Gary Fineout reported on Saturday. Of course, it only appeared to them and the RNC “to be an isolated problem.”
In any event, AP is now reporting that the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), — whose largest expenditure this election cycle, $1.3 million, was on Strategic Allied Consulting — filed an election fraud complaint against the company on Friday. It’s now in the hands of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Of course, that’s the same law enforcement outfit who chose not to prosecute one-time Republican superstar Ann Coulter for voter fraud and voter registration fraud, despite the open and shut case against her, reflected by hard documentation showing that she purposely lied on her voter registration form, on her FL drivers license, as well as knowingly voting at the wrong precinct back in 2005 — in Palm Beach County, coincidentally enough. Her crimes amounted to two 3rd degree felonies and one 1st degree misdemeanor in all, according to the report from the Town of Palm Beach Police Department obtained by The BRAD BLOG back in 2007. The PBPD said, at the time, they did not have jurisdiction in the matter, and it moved up the food chain for years to state authorities and others. Thanks, in no small part to her Republican friends in FL, and a very close friend at the FBI, Coulter was able to run out the statute of limitations clock, and was never held accountable for her election crimes in FL.
Florida, it seems, is very selective about who it chooses to prosecute for election fraud. So we’ll see what comes of the Republican complaint against the Republican voter registration outfit.
In another example of selective interest by Republican state officials, as of late Friday night, the Republican FL Secretary of State’s office still hadn’t bothered to return the Monday call of Susan Bucher, who had called to report the fraudulent registration forms before turning them over to the State Attorney on Monday afternoon. So much for the pretend concerns about voter registration fraud by Republican Gov. Rick Scott and his hand-picked Sec. of State Ken Detzner, who are still attempting to remove supposed “non-citizens” from the rolls, even after their failed previous attempts, and even amidst a real voter registration fraud crisis in the state, as Bucher explained to us during our exclusive interview with her last Wednesday.
Many have asked us if the U.S. Dept. of Justice has yet come in to this matter. If they have, we haven’t heard about it at this time.
At least 11 counties; At least 7 states; At least $3.1 million
Joseph Tanfani, Matea Gold and Melanie Mason of the Los Angeles Times, who have been doing some excellent reporting on this matter, reported on Saturday that “potentially fraudulent voter registration forms submitted on behalf of the state GOP” have now been uncovered “in at least 11 Florida counties.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever had this number of counties that have had this number of cases all at the same time,” Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections tells the paper.
She says that, in addition to those initially found in Palm Beach County, “problematic voter registration forms turned in by the GOP,” as the LA Times describes them, have been discovered by election officials in Lee, Bay, Clay, Santa Rosa, Escambia and Okaloosa counties.
Chris Cate, who serves as spokesman for both the State Election Division as well as the Sec. of State (the Director of the State Election Division left office just before the August primaries, for reasons unknown, and so the Sec. of State’s office has been designated as point person for issues that would normally go to the Election Division while the top spot there remains remains unfilled, just over one month before a Presidential Election) says that more “possibly fraudulent forms have also been reported in Charlotte, Walton, Miami-Dade and Duval counties.”
That’s 11 counties in Florida in all, to date. The number has been growing daily since Tuesday.
The problem has left county Supervisors of Elections scrambling in Florida to repair their voter files before the election, and in advance of October 9, when all changes to the voter database are supposed to be locked down by law.
One Florida election official tells The BRAD BLOG that the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections is scrambling to organize a conference call to try and establish “a uniform, statewide plan to repair our voter file before the election.”
Currently, officials are plowing through tens of thousands of new and updated registrations that have been submitted since the beginning of August, in hopes of locating and verifying those turned in by the FL GOP and Strategic Allied Consulting. The LA Times notes that the state elections website reports the state GOP has turned in 45,917 voter registration forms. Each of them must now be verified to make sure it is legitimate.
AP reports that “The Florida Democratic Party called on the state to ‘revoke’ the ability of state Republicans to continue to register voters while the investigation continues.”
“It is clear that the Republican Party of Florida does not have the institutional controls in place to be trusted as a third-party, voter registration organization,” Scott Arceneaux, Executive Director of the state Democratic Party said.
Though the Strategic county supervisors have logs detailing which applications each of their registration workers turned in, they have yet to turn over that database to county officials, Bucher tells us, making the chore even more difficult at an already hectic time at election offices just one month before the Presidential Election.
But Florida is not the only state where Strategic was contracted to work, and where reports of troubling registrations have begun to emerge.
The LA Times reports…
In Nevada, the secretary of state’s office is investigating a complaint from Gina Greisen, a Democrat and animal rights activist. Earlier this month, she said, she witnessed a man tear up a woman’s voter registration form that identified her as a Democrat and instruct her to fill out a new form without any party affiliation. Greisen said an employee from the Clark County Department of Elections determined that torn form (which Greisen retrieved from the trash) was registered to Strategic Allied Consulting.
Destroying Democratic registration forms is just one of many things that Sproul’s companies, such as Sproul & Associates and Lincoln Strategy Group and now Strategic Allied Consulting, have been accused of in the past, in election after election, in state after state. (We summarized many of the specific allegations against Sproul’s company going back some ten years in our initial report on the scandal last week.)
It should be noted that while Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VA) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) requested that George W. Bush’s then U.S. Attorney General “launch an immediate investigation into the activities of Mr. Sproul and his firm” in 2004, no charges were ever brought. Instead, as Lee Fang observed at The Nation, the Bush Administration (who had spent millions hiring Sproul for similar work in 2004) “literally welcomed Sproul and his wife into the White House for a Christmas party in 2006.”
The Strategic website also claims that investigations into allegations of voter registration fraud by Sproul’s companies, as carried out by the “Democrat” Attorneys General of Arizona and Oregon, as well as another by the Nevada Attorney General, did not result in charges either.
‘One Individual’? That’s One Busy Individual!
The initial responses from both Strategic Allied Consulting and the RNC was to downplay the problems as little more than mischief caused by “one individual” who worked for the firm.
As NBC News noted in their first report on Thursday night, Strategic’s initial response was a two sentence statement on its single-page, generic website, claiming that “we were able to trace all questionable cards to one individual and immediately terminated our working relationship with the individual in question.”
“No matter what quality controls you have there are always going to be bad actors in any large scale operation,” Sproul told NBC’s Michael Isikoff at the time.
Both Strategic and the RNC claimed that they had “zero tolerance” for such activity.
State GOP organizations, who spent enormous amounts of their election year budget on Strategic, offered matching responses.
“The Colorado Republican Party takes any threat to the voting process very seriously,” said the Colorado GOP’s Communications Director Justin Wilson.
“The Republican Party of Virginia takes any threat to the voting process very seriously,” echoed Pat Mulins, Chair of the GOP in Virginia in a haunting refrain, in what cynics might describe as a coordinated response to the GOP’s PR nightmare. Both states, along with FL, NC and NV, reportedly fired the firm.
But with potentially fraudulent forms tied to the Republican Party reported in at least 11 FL counties — “in South Florida, including Miami-Dade, as well as counties in southwest and northeast Florida as well as the Florida Panhandle,” as AP describes them — the “one individual” theory was dead almost as soon as it was uncritically passed on to the public by the media.
In a lengthy new statement on the front and only page of their website, Strategic has modified that theory slightly:
That claim is either true, or not.
‘Bold Action’? RNC Had Sproul Create Shell Company to Hide Him
But the most laughable part of the GOP response to all of this came from RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer, who is quoted in an NBC video report on Thursday saying, with a straight face:
Setting aside his unsupported smear that “The other side clearly engaged for a long time in inappropriate behavior”, when there is no known comparison to any similar activities by the Democratic National Committee or any of its state parties to our knowledge, the most absurd part of Spicer’s declaration is the assertion that his party acted “boldly”.
On Friday, the LA Times reported Spicer’s comment about having acted “boldly.”
Yet three grafs earlier, in the very same piece, they report that “Sproul said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the RNC’s request because the party wanted to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations.” Very ‘bold’ of them! And very ‘zero tolerancy’ too!
But there may be a serious legal rift developing between the party and their well-paid, longtime, hard right operative, Sproul.
In an LA Times follow-up on Saturday, Spicer disputed Sproul’s claims that the party asked him to create the shell company. “To my knowledge, no one requested that,” Spicer is quoted as saying.
For his part, Sproul was quoted in NBC’s initial report on Thursday (though the quote was later removed during an update, for some reason — Isikoff did not respond to our query as to why), blasting the Republican Party of Florida for making “likely libelous comments about our efforts.”
On the Strategic Allied Consulting website, which has been replaced with a long statement from the firm, they repeat the charge: “the Republican Party of Florida chose to make likely libelous comments about our effort.”
Sproul, to date, has declined to offer specifics to The BRAD BLOG on the record, as to what “libelous comments” he and the firm are referring to.
In the meantime, in Virginia, Strategic Allied Consulting, was paid $500,000 this summer to register voters, according FEC disclosures reviewed by Richmond’s CBS 6. The company was registered as a corporation in Virginia in June of 2012, without Sproul’s name on the registration. But a visit by CBS 6’s Joe St. George to the Glen Allen address listed as the corporate home of the outfit resulted in the firm that is actually located at the address, telling him that “they have never heard of the group.”
No Comparison to ACORN, So Rightwing Media Isn’t Even Trying (Yet)
Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, discussing the mess in the Sunshine State over the past several days, told The BRAD BLOG that “the irony is palpable, as the Republican Party has been caught doing the same thing they accused ACORN of when they shut them down.”
Of course, there is no real comparison to ACORN. Unlike Sproul’s outfits, the non-partisan community organizing group was never hired by the Democratic Party to do voter registration work. Moreover, it was ACORN themselves who discovered fraud by a handful of its more than ten thousand workers and notified officials of the fraud and the names of those who had defrauded them.
As perhaps best described by former Republican Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, during a 2009 voter suppression hearing: “The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”
But the pathetically amusing aspect here is watching, and waiting, for the same Rightwing media who turned false allegations against ACORN into a crusade to destroy the four-decade community organization (simply because they had the temerity to legally register millions of low- and middle-income voters who had the damnable tendency to vote for Democrats), to even cover this scandal at all.
Now that the things they falsely accused ACORN of doing for so many years are actually being done, by the Republicans’ top voter registration outfit, the Rightwing media has fallen silent.
While we understand that Fox’s Shepard Smith finally mentioned the scandal late Friday, earlier that day, after what had been nearly a full week of allegations of voter registration fraud in at least 10 FL counties by then, including allegations by one Republican election official that the group had even been found to have registered dead people as new voters, Fox “News” hadn’t mentioned one word about any of it, as Eric Boehlert noticed at Media Matters. At Salon, later that day, Alex Seitz-Wald reported that “a search on Strategic Allied Consulting or Nathan Sproul turns up zero results on the Weekly Standard, the National Review, RedState, the Breitbart sites, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air and other” Rightwing sites which went wall-to-wall about supposed “voter fraud” by ACORN in the past. Imagine that.
In ACORN’s case, there is no evidence that any of the fraud by any of their workers either resulted in a single fraudulent vote or in anybody ever being disenfranchised. Right now, given the addresses changed on existing voter records to places like Shell stations and Land Rover dealers, as is the case in Palm Beach County, Election Supervisor Susan Bucher told us she’s very worried that an unknown number of voters may find themselves disenfranchised when they go to vote on November 6, only to find that they are no longer registered at the precinct where they have voted for years.
Bucher told us on Friday night that she and her staff are madly working through some “37,000 plus address changes and 23,000 new and updated signatures that have occurred in Palm Beach County” since the beginning of August, to determine which ones submitted by the state GOP are legitimate and which ones might be fraudulent and result in a legal voter losing their right to have their vote counted this year.
This is real fraud, and the Republicanist media couldn’t care less.
Mitt’s Sproul Problem
While Sproul has managed to escape criminal accountability despite years of allegations against his companies in election after election and state after state, he has raked in millions from the RNC and its top superstars. In addition to working for Bush/Cheney in ’04, his company was also hired by the McCain/Palin campaign in ’08, even after all of the years of allegations against him.
And, once again, in this year’s election cycle, Sproul was hired by the Mitt Romney campaign who paid him nearly $80,000 late last year for work as a political consultant.
Since the scandal has emerged, the Romney camp has attempted to downplay his relationship to Sproul. NBC reports that Romney spokesperson Sarah Pompei says only: “We used this vendor for signature gathering services during the primary but have not used them since 2011.”
In fact, “this vendor” served as a surrogate for Romney in the media on at least one occasion during this year’s primary debate season.
In February of this year, AP quoted Sproul and described him as “an Arizona political consultant who is working for Romney’s campaign.”
Perhaps someone should ask the GOP nominee when, if ever, Sproul stopped working for his campaign, and why it is that his spokesperson now claims that they haven’t used “this vendor…since 2011”.
CO Viral Video Registration Worker Worked for Sproul
Finally, for now, when we first reported on this story on Tuesday, we had, earlier that morning, covered the video that had gone viral last weekend showing a young lady outside of a Safeway grocery story in Colorado Springs, CO (El Paso County), asking a potential registrant, “Would you vote for Romney or Obama?” before she would offer her a voter registration form.
We noted that help wanted ads put out by Strategic Allied Consulting in North Carolina, as first discovered by Greg Flynn of BlueNC (he was also the one to discover Sproul & Associates ownership of the StrategicAlliedConsulting.com Internet domain, before it was then set to private in a belated attempt to hide Sproul’s fingerprints) sounded suspiciously like the activity seen in the CO video tape, where the GOP had paid Strategic nearly half a million dollars for registration work.
We asked in that very first article on the emerging scandal in Florida at the time: “Was the young worker in Colorado Springs hired by Strategic Allied Consulting for her work with the local GOP?”
We subsequently received confirmation from Justin Miller, the Communications Director for the CO Republican Party, that she was, indeed, working for a third-party contractor hired by the state GOP, though Miller claimed he didn’t have the name of the group handy when we spoke.
He promised to get back to us with the name of the third-party contractor. Unfortunately, after promising to do so once again the following day, he never did.
On Friday night, FOX31 in Denver “confirmed that the young woman seen registering voters outside a Colorado Springs grocery store in a YouTube video, in which she admits to trying to only register voters who support Mitt Romney, was indeed a contract employee of Sproul’s company.”
FOX31 goes on to quote Miller telling them that “We are not aware of any voter registration irregularities from our efforts to register voters.”
The local news outlet then wisely adds: “Of course, the state has little way of knowing if some registration forms were filled out and then discarded.”
But there’s a more troubling aspect to all of this, revealed by that video as well as additional reporting we have done on this matter over the past week. We hope to discuss that disturbing revelation in an upcoming article…
I’ve tried to post this story to Facebook and it hasn’t worked – has anyone else had this issue?
I put the previous Bradblog post on with no problem.
Well done! Good reporting. “This is real fraud, and the Republicanist media couldn’t care less.” Unlike their relentless pursuit and reporting of false allegations against Acorn! What hypocrites!
What can be done if these criminal traitors aren’t all weeded out and their frauds negated prior to the election? What can America do if the theft of our election is successful-after the fact? Can the election-if it results in a win for Romney via these tactics-be tossed out? And, will only the peons be prosecuted as they are when corporate crimes are discovered and prosecuted? I would feel better with some answers.
Today, Los Angeles Times reported that the FL GOP turned in 45,917 forms.
Where Strategic Allied Consulting tried to lay this off on a single worker, William T. Hazzard, Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Assn. of Supervisors of Elections “said she had heard from elections officials in Lee, Bay, Clay, Santa Rosa, Escambia and Okaloosa counties who had also identified problematic voter registration forms turned in by the Florida GOP.”
The Dept. of State’s Chris Cate added that “possibly fraudulent forms had also been reported in Charlotte, Walton, Miami-Dade and Duval counties.”
That’s a rather remarkable feat for one worker.
Hazard, for his part, denies that he altered any forms. He said he was paid $12/hr. that was not tied to the number of forms. He claims he received no training, but was instructed to ask people whom they supported for President. If Obama, “he wished them a good day. If someone said Mitt Romney, he asked if they were registered to vote. If not, he handed them forms to fill out.”
That’s precisely what can been seen in the Colorado video that went viral.
Why can’t RICO be used in this case to go after the RNC? They suggest to state GOP committees that they hire this firm with an well known and acknowledged shady history.
Maybe the Justice Department can cut a deal with Sproul to spill the beans. That would be epic. He should face federal charges especially since the training by his company for workers so clearly was illegal.
Will the white house grow some balls, and do something. I doubt it!
Time is running out for people who registered through these registration drives.
The deadline to register or register is:
Colorado and Florida Oct 9, Virginia Oct 15,
Nevada Oct 16
California Oct 22
http://www.longdistancevoter.org/voter_registration_deadlines
In response to those who’ve raised the concern about what, if anything, the DoJ may be doing about this or other underhanded tactics, such as the Tea Party-connected “True the Vote” and its frivolous challenges to voter eligibility, there is this significant segment of the Ed Show, during which Ed Schultz interviewed Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
Boxer wrote the Justice Department about her concerns that these groups were engaged in voter intimidation in Ohio. She was told they have 42 active investigations. Boxer added that “anyone…who feels they’re being intimidated can call their nearest FBI office.”
Here’s the segment:
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
See, you’re playing right into the Republican’s hands with this. They did this so they can turn around and then say “See? There’s voter fraud. We need the voter ID laws!” Don’t play into it.
The GOP has thing wired, down to the County level.
Take for example, San Diego County. Allegedly a Republican-leaning
county, but just by a hair.
The assistant voter registrar is L. Michael Vu. You may remember him from 2004, when he headed elections in Cuyahoga County, OH. One of the “stolen” counties with huge irregularities.
Well, now Vu is a key official in one of the CA Counties that may be flooded with invalid forged forms. Will he remain non-partisan if called to examine and evaluate the forms?
They’ve got this wired.
Ironically this is precisely the only kind of widespread voter fraud which exists, and passing voter ID laws would do nothing to prevent this sort of thing.
I am sure this will be covered 24/7 by Fox News shortly. FWIW I am in NC and I am going to be checking voting areas to see if these Teabaggers are going to be intimidating voters at the polls and then take pictures, video of them doing so and call the authorities, will also confront them and tell the people they are harassing to go ahead on it an vote and ignore these nutbags.
I find this so sickening. Four years ago, I remember being sickened listening to Greg Palast describe how the the voter fraud happened in past elections, the scrub lists of people erased from the voter rolls (of things like people with criminal records in the future, fake crimes), etc, etc, etc. And I remember thinking at the time that at least that won’t happen again, now that it’s been exposed.
How wrong I was. They don’t care. At all. They haven’t even changed tactics, or methods. It just makes your soul hurt.
Geo @ 12:
Only one correction for you: This is not “voter fraud” at all. The voters have done nothing wrong here. They are doing fine. Please leave them out of this. Thanks!
If William T’s nickname isn’t Duke, I’ll eat my hat…
Brad,
You are precious, a true American treasure.
Richard
Thank you so much for your continued effort to expose the “real†election fraud culprits. While, I too have harped on this theme, I think your blog should be required reading. It is clear to me that the Republicans are just con artists who have pulled a real head job on the public. So when I see what is happening in Florida, it is difficult to simply accept that they are coming clean. I find myself wondering, what are they up to now?
Is it that they’ve finally been caught, so their owning up in order to appear honest? Is it that they’ve decided they simply can’t do enough dirt to win so they’re throwing in the towel? Or is it simply another bait and switch tactic…everyone will presume they’ve come clean, so they’re free to exercise other dirty tricks? Questions about a legitimate win will be met with claims of voter registration sainthood…unlike ACORN, they’ll say. Whatever the case, I am not convinced this is the end of their dirt.
Salon has an article about it today give Brad credit. I hope Rachel Maddow focuses on the fraud. How can the FL GOP claim they acted swiftly when Nathan Sproul has been accused of the same thing for years yet they continue to rehire the sleaze?
The hypocrisy of the GOP is an outrage.
SUNDAY, SEP 30, 2012 10:29 AM CDT
GOP voter form scandal spreads
Suspicious registration forms have now been found in 10 Florida counties BY NATASHA LENNARD http://www.salon.com/2012/09/30/gop_voter_form_scandal_spreads/
Hey, Brad, is there a non-mobile version of this page available? It looks like crud this way on my non-mobile PC! Thanks.
How bizarre — it corrected itself right after I posted! (That or you’re very, very fast.) Okey-dokey, then.
I have posted several comments on the Guardian re. US election fraud and referring readers to bradblog. I urge anyone interested in getting the word out to also register and make comments. Glenn Greenwald writes for them now.
With all the appropriate attention on this form of election fraud my only regret is that there is so little attention paid to how vulnerable our e-voting systems are to insider election fraud.
Yeah, that’s a tough nut to crack, Ernie. Maybe as the media and thus the public slowly awaken to the realities of the ongoing full court press to manipulate our elections there will come one inexplicable election outcome too many here in the good ol’ U. S. of A. and we’ll finally become conscious enough to find the wherewithal to start acting like sensible Ukrainians.
Maybe, just maybe, this can be the scandal that forces a hard look at our entire election system, including the e-machines. I very, very humbly suggest some kind of petition in league with every blog and journalist you know to holder and the prez and whoever for immediate emergency hearings to look at this, and by extension, the evote co.s: obviously if they’re this brazen with registration fraud, certainly they would have no problem fixing the count, where possible. Gee, if only we had POLLS from previous elections to support that contention, or maybe some serious investigative journalist would write a book with some damning info *cough* greg palast *cough* billionaires and ballot bandits… Where was I? Oh yeah, if only we had SOMETHING…
Were the state GOP parties and the RNC running this strategy to sow maximum chaos? Voters showing up in Florida on election day whose ID doesn’t match the made up and changed registration info ny the goon squads are going to be forced to vote provisionally ;if at all). And provisionals aren’t counted. Voila instant voter suppression at levels that could well swing an election. Florida is going to be a big mess on election day, akin to 200.
Funny, I (thought I) registered through rock the vote when I was an 18 year old senior in high school. It turns out the people running it through out registration forms from anyone declaring they were republican. When I went to vote I was informed that I wasn’t registered. I later learned that all the others that declared repub had the same problem. It seems both parties commit whatever viter fraud they
More Voter Fraud Discovered in California By GOP Posted by politicol 9/30/12
2 hours ago
http://www.politicolnews.com/more-voter-fraud-discovered-in-california-by-gop/
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Unfreakin believable
Nunya @ 13 wrote:
Bingo-! That is exactly what is needed! We should be organizing right now to act as a flash-mob collective – we need get our asses down to our local polling place on Nov. 6th and be ready to protect the election from these vile TRUE THE VOTE peeps who have the SAC to challenge voters at the polls based on erroneous / outdated registration info (probably furnished by Strategic Allied, betcha.)
I don’t know how they hope to achieve this, since I was always under the impression that that is ELECTIONEERING, which is not only frowned upon, but ILLEGAL in most states.
At least that’s the line we’re given in state after state whenever we attempt to do citizen exit polling. In Butler Co. WI (Waukesha, wouldn’t ya know) the police were called on our volunteers.
…still, LA TIMES reported last week that voters are already being challenged in OHIO based on false voter registration info; good news is these cases are being tossed out because the challenger has burden of proof / has to have a GOOD REASON to throw a voter off the rolls, and in these particular cases, she came up bust.
‘Tea party groups work to remove names from Ohio voter rolls – activists say they’re challenging some names to ensure ‘election integrity.’ Others say it’s an effort to suppress the votes of likely Obama supporters…’
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/26/nation/la-na-ohio-voting-fight-20120927
Now I am wondering if these folks in OH who were targeted by this TTV volunteer can’t counter-file against her for voter intimidation…?
Seems these TRUE THE VOTE douche-canoes are walking a MIGHTY thin line, already crossed (and pissed on, even) by Strategic Allied Cons’ts.
Ernie? Any thoughts on that?
>From the above link:
O. My. GAWD.
…does he really believe the words coming out of his mouth?
>From Gina’s link @ 29, fascinating! Bad forms cropping up in RIVERSIDE CO…ha!~ This is like a push pin map of all the places we’ve been documenting election fraud in for years!
Is it wrong to say that it’s almost EXCITING to see how right we were?
It is. It’s wrong. But wow!
None of this information is surprising. We have known of the GOP’s lack of morals and ethics going back decades to the days of Richard, I’m not a Crook, Nixon. The Republicans and their stoolies, Faux “News” can rationalize all they want to but they have been caught attempting to destroy democracy, one of the worst things any political party can do.
Don’t mean to flame the thread – but at least I’m no Wingnut Steve – (speaking of, where IS that guy? He’s been awfully quiet since this story broke.)
…had to jump back in because I can barely believe what I’m reading (again from Gina’s link @ 29):
The Problems Found:
1) 27,700 people registered as newly becoming a Republican
2) 133 voters were added to the republican lists, that are Democrats to boost GOP membership
3) Membership in republican party increased 23% in a battleground county.
4) Voters were tricked by signing documents they believed were for ballot measures on creating jobs or legalizing marijuana or so they thought. Along with those petitions they were asked to fill out a registration form. That registration form would be checked off as a republican supporter.
…they targeted me and my fellow WEED SMOKERS??! Okay, now I’m even more super-duper, wildly, madly, deeply pissed.
I mighta signed that damn thing, too.
In fact, I think I did.
Okay one more post because I really want to address Ernie’s previous point re: how to link this kind of outright *front end* voter suppression tactics breaking wide in the minds of the electorate w/ the *back end* (e-voting election manipulation)…
We have to say it every chance we get: if the GOP will blatantly cheat like this out in the open where everyone can see it (as they did in the Ron Paul Caucuses in state after state this year)then what WOULDN’T they do on the back end via electronic manipulation – which is undetectable, unknowable, untraceable, and utterly vulnerable?
…especially when we look at the GOP receipt, right? Where are they spending most of their budget? On scurrilous groups like Sproul’s to disenfranchise voters before they get to the polls.
And now we learn that Bain Capitol has ties to HART, INT voting machine vendor / several board members, if I remember correctly.I didn’t know that until it broke this week, too.
“Wherein lies your treasure, therein lies your heart..” Can’t remember who said it.
The money is being spent to scrub the rolls and stop legal voters from voting…
what they can’t do on the front end,
they take care of on the back end.
It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a conspiracy REALITY.
Is there a link between Nathan Sproul and misinformation spread in Wisconsin just before the June recall elections? “Robo” calls and Scott Walker’s canvassers reportedly were misinforming people that if they had signed petitions to recall Governor Walker they didn’t need to vote in the recall election — their signature was their vote.
There was speculation at the time of ties to Nathan Sproul through a former Sproul operative, Dennis Rhodes, hired by the Wisconsin Republican Party to canvass for Walker: http://www.politiscoop.com/us-politics/wisconsin-politics/1442-election-eve-group-interferes-with-wisconsin-recall-election.html
Brad, re Ernie @ 23,
How do the various states with early voting collect and safeguard results?
Are vote totals noted and compiled every day?
Without leaking results?
Machines reset to zero each day?
Or do votes accumulate in machines for the whole early voting period?
Are machines secured on-site every night for forty days?
Hauled back and forth daily?
Looks like a whole series of disasters just begging to happen.
Tony @ 27 said:
Wow! That’s terrible! What year did it happen? What state? What county? I’d love to learn more! Do you have evidence of the complaint you filed? Do you have evidence of the complaint anybody else filed? Do you have evidence of that “others that declared repub had the same problem”?
If so, where is that evidence? I’d love to see it! Because, I suspect what you’re actually doing, is pulling something straight outta your ass.
But thanks for supporting criminals!
Jeannie Dean @30 wrote:
Spot on, Jeannie. But keep in mind that the True the Vote fascists have been planning this for quite some time and are both well funded and well organized.
Recall that more than one year ago, in her testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights, Judith Browne Dianis, civil rights litigator & co-director of The Advancement Project, said:
While it will be useful for the FBI and the DOJ to investigate illegal voter intimidation, I would respectfully suggest that the issue of vigilant voter protection at the polls should immediately be taken up by the OWS general assemblies all across the nation.
Even the anarchists in the movement who have opted not to themselves vote should not be opposed to protecting the rights of those who choose to do so.
@32 Jeannie Dean
That article links to the wrong Iolite. I think the voter fraud one is here: http://www.ioliteconsultinggroup.com/#!contact
Jeannie@34:
Trying to understand the damage. “That registration form would be checked off as a republican supporter.” Of course it’s despicable, but what does that really mean? ASSuming it’s a valid registration form, they can still vote for whom they want on election day, no? I understand they may not be able to vote in a primary, but they weren’t likely to anyway given the way they were registered.
Cosimo –
The purpose of doing the “switch” from D to R (or as Bev Harris discovered in her amazing electronic poll book research investigation in Memphis – AFRICAN AMERICAN voters changed to WHITE) is to load the rolls w/ non-existent GOP voters – so when they pad the exit polls to match the results after stealing the election outright on these vulnerable, cheap, junk voting machines, no one will question the veracity of the “official numbers” as it relates to the demographics.
i.e. after the JUNE 5th WI recall, even Rachel Maddow was wondering “How is it possible that 12% of likely Obama voters in WI ALSO voted for Scott Walker?”…
…it’s a quick fix for preventing that kind of red flag from being detected.
@Jeannie #41
EXACTLY. That is is why stories are now appearing in the MSM that exit polls are “biased” and inaccurate to favor Obama. More “cover story” for a theft ofmthe election.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.writeinrevolution.com%2F&h=sAQEftuFUThis election is rigged – the electronic machines have, AGAIN, been hacked to flip votes. Your vote will not count no matter what the SOS’s tell you about the integrity of the electronic machines.
Until the Paper Ballot Count and Transparency are returned to the people the elections will continue to be rigged and your count will mean NOTHING.
WHY DID the obama administration hire BRIAN FRIEDMAN a DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL BLOGGER HACK to report theses so-called accusations of voter fraud by the Republican Party?…
[ED NOTE: Rest of comment deleted as absolute, complete, knowing, if pretty funny, wingnut disinformation, which is in strict violation of the very few rules we have for posting at The BRAD BLOG. By the way, my name is BRAD Friedman, not Brian. And no, I’m neither Democratic, nor “hired” by anyone. Whether or not I’m a “hack”, I’ll leave to others to decide. But, clearly, you sir, are fool. – BF]
I live in Los Angeles. I have been a registered voter for many, MANY years. I have been an activist at OFA since 2007 and I served as a delegate at the DNC Conventions in 2008 and last month. (In order to serve as a delegate, your voter registration is VERIFIED.)
I was surprised that I could not find my voter registration online at the LA County Recorder’s office last week. (and I only checked to show another OFA volunteer how simple it is to help people check online.)
I called the LA County Recorder’s office and was surprised to find out that MY LAST NAME (which is Hispanic) WAS CHANGED! If I type in the incorrect last name, it shows up.
Let this be a warning to ALL of US (including YOU) that we should verify our voter registrations – even in safely BLUE states. If it could happen to an OFA activist who has helped voters to register since 2000, it can happen to others who are not as active!
Check here: http://www.canivote.org/
PeoplePower @ 43 said:
Really? Got any actual, ya know, evidence to back up that serious charge? Or are you just telling us what you fear?
That is, of course, entirely wrong. But if you don’t want to vote, that’s certainly up to you. It will certainly save the bad guys the extra work in needing to steal it from you. I’m sure they’ll appreciate that!
Jeannie@41,
Thanks for that explanation. I suppose after 2004, the GOP would have no standing to lean on exit polls to make their case, but then again, logic and memory aren’t exactly the cornerstones of their messaging machine. I can only hope that, should they try to enact this tactic, it would only focus attention directly onto their own shenanigans.
#40 Will “lackey”. An appropriate handle I suppose. 🙂
# 44 I mean
Once Obama gets re-elected, he has an opportunity — I think, an obligation — to have a purge of Republican dirty-trickers. The truth is that even the Republican Party itself would benefit from such action. Right now they are crippled by this right-wing nonsense. Maybe things have come full circle and we will finally see something else happening in the GOP. Although I have never voted for a Republican, I would welcome the opportunity to do so, if and when they stop supporting absurd policies and nominating bad people for public office.
Who can push to get sameday voter registration? Instant rectification for having your registration hijacked by Sproul et al . We all know provisional ballots are not counted..yet are they on paper at least? How about how the networks are not doing exit polling in 19 states. That scares me. Vote on paper please!
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