Forum Post: more info on republiclan voter fraud in Florida

By Joel Engelhardt Palm Beach Post 10/4/2012

As part of a criminal probe, the state has asked all 67 of its elections supervisors to scrutinize every new voter registration submitted by a private contractor on behalf of the Republican Party of Florida.

The task in Palm Beach County involves pulling at least 2,589 voter registration forms filed since Aug. 1 from more than 60,000 records on paper, many of which already have been warehoused.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said Wednesday that, at the request of the state’s Division of Elections, it had launched a
criminal investigation a week after The Palm Beach Post reported that 106 registration forms with potential irregularities had been submitted to the state attorney’s office.

The forms, which included change of address or party affiliation, as well as new voter signups, appeared to be filled out and signed by the same hand. Some had obviously phony addresses, such as a car dealership on Okeechobee Boulevard and a Miami gas station, Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said. They were detected by workers at the county’s Palm Beach Gardens elections office.

Those forms have been turned over to the FDLE.

The Republican Party of Florida and the Republican National Committee last week fired the contractor, Strategic Allied Consulting. The state GOP had paid the firm $1.3 million to register voters and the RNC about $3 million in key swing states such as Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia. Strategic Allied had submitted about 46,000 voter registrations in Florida.

The company said it fired the worker who collected the Palm Beach County forms, which were submitted on Sept. 5. Since then, Strategic Allied has turned in 850 more forms in Palm Beach County, Bucher said.

In two emails to state election supervisors this week, the Division of Elections made it clear that it doesn’t want legitimate voters to be disenfranchised.

The state will work with election supervisors to assure that “victims of registration irregularities have been contacted about any potential registration issues and given an opportunity to correct any problems,” Bennett Miller, a Division of Elections lawyer, said in an email on Wednesday.

The state urged election supervisors to work quickly. “We are asking all of you to complete the review as soon as possible,” Miller wrote.

Bucher, a former Democratic state legislator, urged concerned voters to check their voter status on her website, pbcelections.org. Registration for the Nov. 6 presidential election closes Tuesday.

Conducting the review, however, will take a long time, Bucher said, especially while she and her staff prepare for the Nov. 6 presidential election. This week alone, she said, her office sent out 86,000 absentee ballots. The Strategic Allied forms are mixed in with all new voter registration forms, as well as those seeking a change of address or updating a signature. Those forms, since Aug. 1, number more than 60,000, she said.

On Tuesday, an email from Miller told supervisors to find and review all forms submitted by Strategic Allied on behalf of the GOP, separating them into piles — those with no problems and those “you have identified as having irregularities, missing information, or otherwise cause you concern about the authenticity of the registrations.”

“Please limit access to the registrations to yourselves and a trusted member of your staff,” he wrote. “At some point, these registrations may become evidence used in court so it is important for you take steps to protect them from tampering.”

Willfully submitting false voter registration information, or altering information on an application without the applicant’s consent, is a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The man behind Strategic Allied, Arizona political consultant Nathan Sproul, has faced scrutiny over voter registration forms before, including charges in 2004 that his workers tossed forms filled out by voters identifying themselves as Democrats.

Officials from his company knew in early September of another registration issue in Florida. Cheryl Johnson, director of registrations for the Lee County elections supervisor, said she contacted the company and party officials after detecting problems with 16 registration forms.

On some forms, the signatures appeared to be similar. On others, answers to the question about party affiliation were checked in an obviously different way from answers to other questions, she told The Post.

Johnson said she reached out to a local Republican Party official and a Strategic Allied representative about the troubling paperwork. They blamed the problem on a rogue worker, who they fired, she told the Tampa Bay Times.