Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)- Guest Blogger
It seems that trouble is brewing again in the State of Florida since election officials have discovered suspicious voter registration forms in at least 10 Florida counties. “Florida elections officials said Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida, which has filed an election fraud complaint with the state Division of Elections against its one-time consultant.” LA Times
If you guessed that these possibly fraudulent registration forms were just a minor error or blip on the registration screen, you might be wrong. When you have these documents turning up in 10 counties, including the two largest counties, Miami-Dade and Duval counties, people should sit up and notice.
“Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Assn. of Supervisors of Elections, said Friday that 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. Pasco County officials discovered possibly fraudulent forms during the Republican primary, Davis said. Cate, the spokesman for the state elections division, said possibly fraudulent forms have also been reported in Miami-Dade and Duval, two of the state’s most populous counties. The number of suspicious voter registration applications was unusual, Davis said. “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.” LA Times
The company at the heart of this potential scandal was recommended to the state Republican organizations by the Republican National Committee. “The controversy in Florida — which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County — has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting.The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million — routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia — to register voters and run get-out-the-vote operations. Wisconsin and Ohio had not yet paid the firm for get-out-the-vote operations it was contracted to do.” LA Times
Does it concern anyone else that all the states involved so far could be considered swing states in the upcoming Presidential election? If this company was working in several other states, could this improper activity show up in the other states listed? These improper registration forms could cause havoc at the polling booth and force many legal voters to vote by provisional ballot, that in many cases never get counted. This is not the first time the owner behind this company has been in trouble. The history behind Nathan Sproul, is interesting to say the least.
“The firm’s founder, Nathan Sproul, is a longtime Republican strategist whose reputation was tarred by widespread accusations of voter registration fraud and attempts to suppress Democratic voter turnout. George W. Bush’s campaign reportedly paid Sproul over $8 million for his work in the 2004 election. Sproul, now under new scrutiny, claims he started Strategic Allied Consulting because the RNC wanted to hide his past:
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. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.
“In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company’s name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet,” Sproul said.” Think Progress
Why would the RNC push this company on the state organizations, knowing the shaky history of Mr. Sproul? If I remember correctly, the Republican Party crucified ACORN when they admitted that certain employees had turned in improper registration forms and turned in those employees to the authorities. Is the Liberal Media going to follow the same path and relentlessly attack Mr. Sproul and his organization and the RNC for these alleged voter registration transgressions?
Since the RNC suggested that Sproul start-up a whole new company to do this work, is this an example of a planned dirty trick by the Republican Party or is it just an example of a guy with a checkered past not doing a good job at supervising his workers? “The suspected fraud included apparent cases of dead people being registered as Republican voters, said Paul Lux, the supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County and a Republican. He compared the suspected fraud to the alleged acts of ACORN, the liberal activist group that became the center of a national controversy several years ago. “It’s kind of ironic that the dead people they accused Acorn of registering are now being done by the RPOF” [Republican Party of Florida], Lux said in an interview with NBC News.” NBC News
Ironic was not the word I would have used. What do you think happened here? Is this another ACORN situation that can be blamed on “bad apples”? When you combine the Voter ID laws and this kind of activity, it could be argued that this is just part of an illegal strategy to disenfranchise voters. Let’s hear your opinion!
Feemeister bleated:
“Hubert, I hate to break it to you, but you are dead wrong about the votes in Florida in the 2008 election. The votes were NOT counted over and over and over again. Some votes were, but not all.”
Feemeister – Yep. They sure were counted. Again, and again, and again. And even by liberal standards (no pun intended) President Bush still had more votes. Al Gore (who didn’t even carry his own state) simply would not accept this fact. Several news agencies would not accept this and had their own investigations into the votes and they still came up with President Bush having more votes. Period. It is embarrassing, and several notches beyond stupidity for seemingly intelligent (?) people to perpetuate the issue of the Florida votes and that President Bush stole the election. You can’t steal something you already possess.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/recount/
Mike Spindell bleated:
“It does ring a bell and in truth defines you not as a “bald-faced liar” but as a truly ignorant FOXNews watcher. ACORN was a non-issue made up out of tissue paper, except that it allowed the truly ignorant to believe that a plot was afoot to register voters illegally.”
Mike – Google ACORN and voter fraud. This isn’t something generated by Fox News. Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. You’re pretending that ACORN didn’t have anything to do with voter fraud, and suggest that it is something made up by Fox News, but I’m the “truly ignorant” one?
“I don’t suffer fools gladly, nor do I debate with the ignorant. Hubert is merely repeating talking points with no validity. To engage him in honest debate is a fools errand and I am not a fool. As for the media of the mainstream, it is all nonsense prattled by fools all over the political spectrum. Hubert takes the lies bandied about seriously, I don’t. As for Acorn I’ve no doubt there are warts but it is a benign program and not the evil conspiracy that right wingers make it out to be.”
Mike – Your ilk may control the media but anyone can fire up Google and check things out online. There are several articles about the voter fraud of ACORN but to hear you talk, there wasn’t any. I guess all those articles about the fraud are fools as well, since they don’t fit your mold of what’s true.
“Mike – Google ACORN and voter fraud. This isn’t something generated by Fox News.”
Hubert,
I did google it as you asked and this is what I found on the first page:
1. A paid ad by Judicial Watch a right wing organization backed by the koch Bros.
2. A Wikipedia Article that contained: “ACORN received significant negative publicity in the wake of the 2009 production and publication of videos, which were later found to be partially falsified and selectively edited,[9] by two conservative activists, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles.”
3. A Fox News Article.
4. Unfounded accusations from a site titled “rottenacorn.com”
5. An article from the blog of the late, unlamented, andrew Breitbart, who was a Republican political trickster.
6. An article from the ultra Right Wing World Net Daily.
7. http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/gops_acorn_moment/
8. An article from the right wing front website “acornfraud.com”
9. an article for the ultra Right Wing, Koch funded group AIM.
10. An article on GOP voter fraud in Florida by the Christian Science Monitor.
11. http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/acorn-accusations/
That was the first page alone. Obviously your research methods are biased and your political analysis is limited by your own prejudice.
“Mike – Your ilk may control the media but anyone can fire up Google and check things out online.”
No Hubert, your “ILK” controls the media as can be ascertained by googling the major media outlets ownership and cross correlating that with who they have given money to and received money from. You’re just another dumb puppet who will vote to elect pathological liars like Romney/Ryan. The saddest thing about you is that you think you are smart.
Malisha 1, October 5, 2012 at 1:41 am
Feemeister, do you know what very small but extremely significant thing brought it home to me immediately that Florida had been fraudulently “thrown” to W Bush in the 2000 election? THIS:
They came to inform GWB that Florida had gone for Gore, and ON CAMERA, Bush did not even look disappointed or flustered, not for a split second. No emotion showed in his face. He said immediately, without hesitation, “Oh I don’t believe that for a minute.”
Um, hello, now, tell me, if there were not a fix in, how would Bush have NOT believed what he was told at that time? It was a close, close race and he — like everybody else — should have realized it could go either way, so his KNOWING that it went HIS way means to me, and always will mean to me, that HE KNEW there was a fix in place already and he trusted his brother Jeb to deliver Florida to him because it had all been arranged.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Harris
Maybe she should try to handle snakes instead.
Malisha,
he just had a bad case of stage fright!
Feemeister, I cannot help but agree. I thought of that, actually, in September of 2001 in fact. He sat there. “Huh, the whole thing collapsed, um…uh…well…”
Malisha, it sounds a lot like his reaction to the Trade Center Bombings when he was reading to the children.
Feemeister, do you know what very small but extremely significant thing brought it home to me immediately that Florida had been fraudulently “thrown” to W Bush in the 2000 election? THIS:
They came to inform GWB that Florida had gone for Gore, and ON CAMERA, Bush did not even look disappointed or flustered, not for a split second. No emotion showed in his face. He said immediately, without hesitation, “Oh I don’t believe that for a minute.”
Um, hello, now, tell me, if there were not a fix in, how would Bush have NOT believed what he was told at that time? It was a close, close race and he — like everybody else — should have realized it could go either way, so his KNOWING that it went HIS way means to me, and always will mean to me, that HE KNEW there was a fix in place already and he trusted his brother Jeb to deliver Florida to him because it had all been arranged.
Well said feemeister.
Elaine,
Thanks for the link. That is an amazing story of the Right’s unabashed attempts to steal another election.
Video: Republican Party Training ‘Poll Challengers’ In Illegal Voter Suppression
By Aviva Shen on Oct 4, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/10/04/961231/video-republican-party-training-poll-challengers-in-illegal-voter-suppression/
Sorry, that should have been 2000 election; not 2008. I’m not up at all on what happened with votes in that election. But I did closely follow the recount here in the 2000 election.
Hubert, I hate to break it to you, but you are dead wrong about the votes in Florida in the 2008 election. The votes were NOT counted over and over and over again. Some votes were, but not all. And not the ones that were conveniently lost and disappeared. Adding to that the Bush brothers previously having bought stock in a company selling the electronic (or whatever they are) voting machines, and Jeb telling George that he would give Florida to his brother, it looked extremely shady on the Republican side in that vote. Additionally, as close as the votes were there should have been a total recount of EVERY vote IN THE SUNSHINE by disinterested parties! This was never done. Too many votes were thrown out, and NOT recounted; that was the whole problem as far as I was concerned. We will never know what the correct result of that election was. We know what courts ruled as far as recounting and not recounting were, but we NEVER found out the will of the people in Florida in that election. Your comments were based solely on your opinion, and not on the facts of what truly went on here.