Salon.com > voter registration fraud

Supreme Court to consider Arizona’s voter registration law

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:34:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will consider the validity of an Arizona law that tries to keep illegal immigrants from voting by demanding all state residents show documents proving their U.S. citizenship before registering to vote in national elections.

The high court will hear arguments Monday over the legality of Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law that doesn't require such documentation.

This case focuses on voter registration in Arizona, which has tangled frequently with the federal government over immigration issues involving the Mexican border. But it has broader implications because four other states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee — have similar requirements, and 12 other states are contemplating similar legislation, officials say.

The Obama administration is supporting challengers to the law.

If Arizona can add citizenship requirements, then "each state could impose all manner of its own supplemental requirements beyond the federal form," Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said in court papers. "Those requirements could encompass voluminous documentary or informational demands, and could extend to any eligibility criteria beyond citizenship, such as age, residency, mental competence, or felony history."

Anti-voter fraud group barred for possible fraud

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 05:22:00 +0000

The Tea Party group True the Vote has promised to train and deploy up to 1 million poll watchers today in an effort that many progressives fear is a veiled attempt to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. The groups’ activists, often garbed in suits and armed with cameras and clipboards, make it their business to challenge, on various pretexts, the rights of voters to cast their ballots -- usually, it seems, in minority precincts. This is legal (though intentionally targeting minority neighborhoods is not), but poll observers have also been accused of hovering over voters, blocking lines of people who were trying to cast ballots, harassing official poll workers, demanding personal information outside of polling places, and filming people as they enter or exit the polling place. All this, of course, in the name of combating voter fraud, which study after independent study has found to be virtually nonexistent.

GOP voter registration scandal widens

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 18:15:00 +0000

A man originally reported to have been working for the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested by the Rockingham County, Va., Sheriff's Office on Thursday and charged with attempting to destroy voter registration forms by tossing them into a dumpster behind a shopping center in Harrisonburg, Va.

"Prosecutors charged him with four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of failing to disclose voter registration applications and one count of obstruction of justice," according to a report late Thursday afternoon from TPM's Ryan Reilly. More charges could be forthcoming, according to officials.

But there is more to the story, as evidence emerges to document that it ties into a still-expanding nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal that the BRAD BLOG first began reporting in late September, after we'd learned that the Republican Party of Florida had turned in more than 100 allegedly fraudulent and otherwise suspect voter registration forms in Palm Beach County. The story has continued to widen ever since, to a dozen Florida counties and several other states, now including Virginia, and even to the upper-echelons of the Republican Party itself.

Karl Rove tied to shady GOP operative Nathan Sproul?

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Congressman Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas) has written GOP party boss Karl Rove a letter demanding that Rove, co-founder of the conservative super PAC American Crossroads, explain his ties to a Republican operative who has been accused of electoral misconduct and voter registration fraud.

The letter, coming less than a month before the upcoming presidential election, comes at a time when increasing attention is being given to the issue of voter suppression, a technique that played a key role in Karl Rove’s victorious 2004 campaign that reelected George Bush.

This time the operative in question is Nathan Sproul, who, with his company, Strategic Allied Consulting, has been accused of electoral misconduct and voter registration fraud. Sproul’s company allegedly collected fraudulent voter registration forms, some of which had the addresses of existing Democratic voters changed so that the validity of their registration might be challenged on Election Day. His company has been hired by the Republicans to work in seven battleground states—Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Ohio. In some states, he also appears to be working under the name Issue Advocacy Partners.

Operative linked to voter registration fraud still working for GOP?

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:45:00 +0000

Questions continue to grow about Nathan Sproul and his various companies' multimillion dollar work for the Republican National Committee, despite claims that they've broken ties with him on the heels of a nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal. A virtual clone of his discredited Strategic Allied Consulting firm appears to still be operating on behalf of Republicans in at least 10 states.

At the same time, Democrats in Congress are now asking for official answers from both Sproul and very senior Republicans, according to new letters obtained by The BRAD BLOG.

Sproul went on the record with us, briefly, to address some of these issues in his own defense, before he was ordered by his newly hired crisis response manager to stop speaking to us all together.

When the RNC invested $3 million to hire Strategic Allied Consulting, a company quietly created this August by Sproul, a paid political consultant to Mitt Romney, and then instructed state GOP affiliates in seven key battleground states (FL, NC, VA, NV, CO, WI and OH) to do the same, they knew very well about his companies' long documented history of alleged electoral misconduct and voter registration fraud.