GOP Voter Registration Firm Accused of Fraud Fired in North Carolina

Last updated on October 2nd, 2012 at 11:57 pm

Another one bites the dust.

The North Carolina Republican Party announced Monday that they have fired the fraud scandal-ridden Sproul shell company that has also done around 70,000 voter registrations for the Romney campaign. Local station WRAL reports:

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North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood said Monday the party had terminated its relationship with Virginia-based Strategic Allied Consulting, a private company paid more than $3 million to register voters in at least seven presidential battleground states.
“We take any threat to the voting process very seriously,” Lockwood said.

Election officials have alerted local offices to be on the look out for fraudulent registration forms as well.

It looks like the Republicans’ ACORN allegations are coming back to bite them, because the media is on high alert for voter registration fraud this year, unlike in previous elections when the exact same accusations of fraud were leveled at several Republican voter registration firms, one of which was not only arrested and charged but pleaded guilty in California in 2009 for the 2008 election.

If you didn’t hear about that, it’s because the media was busy chasing James O’Keefe’s doctored videos of ACORN employees around. ACORN was cleared of wrong doing alleged by O’Keefe, by the way. Mark Jocoby, head of the Young Political Majors, was charged with changing voter registration forms from Democrat to Republican in California (he was also under investigation in three other states) as well as having committed voter fraud himself. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge.

Amid the fraud scandal of the Sproul shell company hired by the Republican National Committee and state Republican Parties, Republicans are halting their voter registration drives in several key swing states.

Sproul’s shell company Strategic is none too pleased with the Florida Republican Party for calling them out. They issued a statement suggesting that the Florida party had made libelous statements against Strategic forcing the RNC to cut ties with them:

“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.

Of course, the RNC knew about Sproul’s previous accusations of election fraud stemming from allegations of shredded Democratic forms and other dirty tricks. To avoid appearing like they were asking him to do what he has been routinely accused of, they demanded that Sproul set up a shell company.

Sadly for Republicans, they brought this on themselves both by hiring Sproul and by spending years demonizing ACORN. The difference between what happened in Florida and ACORN is a vital one: ACORN turned in their own bad forms. Sproul did not.

Sproul continues to take refuge in the one bad apple rogue employee narrative, but with ten counties in Florida reporting possibly fraudulent registration forms, this is looking less and less possible. And then there’s the issue of the girl caught on tape in Colorado registering only Romney supporters, who it turns out, was working for Sproul.

That rogue employee sure gets around.

Republicans are in a bad situation because while the Obama campaign can rely on volunteers, the Republicans need to pay people to register voters. The Romney campaign offers to pay for lodging and food for their warm bodies to help get out the vote. This is because the numbers don’t lie. There are more registered Democrats than Republicans.

The Miami Herald points out that Republicans 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.”

What Sproul was doing in Florida could hamper Democrats who want to vote due to their addresses being fraudulently changed and not matching their ID. All of this is designed to help Republicans sell their trickle down fallacy. If Republicans can’t make their case to the people, then perhaps it’s time to rethink their ideas.

The Republican Party will demand their money back any moment now. Right?

Sarah Jones

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