Alan Grayson, former Democratic representative from Florida, send me a fund-raising letter today. This is nothing unusual. I'd say a good half of my emails come from various parts of the country where people are locked in this election battle. What's different about Alan's letter, however, is the first part:
Dear Mary:Make you sick? Make you feel powerless when you go to your voting place to cast your vote?
Question: Who is the largest single contractor of the Republican Party of Florida today?
Answer: Someone whose company, in 2004, shredded Democratic voter registration forms.
And now it's happening again.
Meet Nathan Sproul. His first cause was ending sex education. That catapulted him to the head of the Republican Party of Arizona.
Sproul then set up Sproul & Associates. In 2004, Republicans paid Sproul's firm $7.9 million to go around registering voters under the confusing name of "America Votes," which happens to be the name of a large progressive organization. Then a former employee of Sproul & Associates showed a local TV station shredded voter registration forms - for Democrats only. He said that Sproul's firm faithfully turned in Republican registration forms, and shredded the Democratic ones. Or just refused to register Democrats at all. Another Sproul employee said the same thing.
Fast forward to the 2008 election, in Florida. ACORN registered tens of thousands of new voters, Democratic, Republican and Independent. ACORN was so good at voter registration that Republican leaders in the Florida state government retaliated by criminalizing the voter registration process. The Republicans booby-trapped voter registration so badly that even the Florida League of Women Voters gave up. Virtually any irregularity in the voter registration process can land you in jail. And you know what they did to ACORN.
Fast forward again, to the 2012 election, in Florida. The Republican Party of Florida, the Republican National Committee, and the Romney Campaign all hire a firm called Strategic Allied Consulting to do voter registration in Florida. In fact, Strategic Allied Consulting has become the single largest contractor to the Republican Party of Florida, receiving more than $3 million. It is the sole voter registration operation hired by the Republican National Committee, at the expense of a further $3 million. It has been hired to do the same work in Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. And the person behind Strategic Allied Consulting is . . . Nathan Sproul.
Which explains the reports, this month, of voter registration fraud by Strategic Allied Consulting in a dozen Florida counties. More than 100 cases in one county alone.
What can we do about this NOW?
Well, he was fired but apparently has been rehired in some other states. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteFired from where? And rehired in what other states?
ReplyDeleteMY last comment was "disappeared." Hope this goes through. Our local League registers voters for the County. We are very careful not to get involved with any reg. drives but this, because we could be sued. We have a fairly large rainy day fund for such a small local League, in case someone tries to go after us.
ReplyDeleteHattie, I don't know what happened to your last comment. So sorry it disappeared. Your comments will always be good here.
ReplyDeleteWe do have to watch that powerless meme. Conflates with age, I believe. We need big, big push on voter registration efforts AFTER the election, i.e., turning back efforts at limiting it as in Virginia.
ReplyDeleteNaomi: Thanks....that's an excellent suggestion.
ReplyDeleteNaomi: p.s. the "powerless meme" isn't just from old age. it's from the message they keep sending us (in my case at least 10 x day) to CONTRIBUTE $$ because of Karl Rove, the Koch boyz, et al., are way ahead of us. hello? of course they are. so wot do we do, other than enrich the MSM so the folks running our show can match the gazillionaires ad for ad. Nuts to that.
ReplyDelete