Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Dirty Voter Registration Tricks

compiled from several sources

Last night I was reading an article from Nevada, saying that a group directly funded by the Republican party was registering voters and illegally destroying the registration forms of anyone who had filled out Democrat. In the last paragraph, they mentioned that the company had left Nevada and headed to Oregon.

This morning, I saw on TV that the same outfit was doing the same thing here in Portland. The upshot of this is that people who thought they had registered to vote have been disenfranchised, since they will get no ballot in this election.

Yes, the state of Oregon is now investigating, but that will not restore the ability to vote in this election to those who have had their most fundamental right stolen from them by those who make a mockery of our democracy.

This has happened all across the country, with reports of voter registration fraud from Florida (again), Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Michigan, South Dakota, Missouri, Arizona, Nevada and now Oregon. Look at all those “swing states” - is this the secret plan of the GOP to again win an election by manipulating the Electoral College count?

- Bob Woods

From DailyKos:
Searching for information on the voter registration fraud stories breaking tonight in Nevada and Oregon, I kept coming across the same name: Nathan Sproul of Sproul & Associates in Phoenix, Arizona.

Nathan Sproul is the former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition.

Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voter Outreach, Inc., a group that used paid registrars to register voters in a number of states including Nevada, Oregon, Arizona and perhaps more, including Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maine and Missouri.  (Others states pending, particularly swing states.)  Sproul’s organization also recruited registrars by fraudulently telling recruits that they would be working for America Votes, a legitimate nonpartisan GOTV operation!

But Nathan Sproul may have made one fatal mistake in his efforts… He got greedy.  Yes, he failed to pay many workers and he didn’t pay his rent.  He pissed some people off.  And he raised suspicions.  There is a good chance that this may be fraud on a MASSIVE scale…

Sproul was also instrumental in getting petitions signed for Ralph Nader to get on the ballot in - surprise! - swing states!

Here is the first page of a Google search on Nathan Sproul.

Some real gems turn up:

How about this newsgroup posting to a forum for librarians warning them of a possible fraud perpetrated by Sproul.  It includes a description of the scam in Pennsylvania, an article from a West Virginia newspaper reporting the same scam, and a comment from a librarian in Medford, Oregon outlining the same scam in her library… all fraudulently misrepresenting the organization doing the hiring as America Votes:

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Over the past few days, there has been a rash of stories about fraudulent voting practices committed by GOP operatives.  To give a brief (and far from complete) list:

SPROUL & ASSOCIATES is directly financed by the RNC (link).  Nathan Sproul is reported as the director of the Arizona Christian Coalitition.

The Charlston Gazette reported on 8/20 Sproul & Associates in West Virginia started a voter registration campaign where ONLY republicans were registered—not Democrats—apparently in violation of the West Virginia law.  (link[link).

There have been reports posted on the internet from Pennsylvania (on September 17) and Maryland (on September 16) of the the same organization—Sproul & Associates—pretending to be workers from the non-partisan America Votes, and registering ONLY Republicans.  To obtain locations to set up shop, Sproul and Associates apparently lied to puiblic librarians about being non-partisan.  (The internet postings, that took place on a librarian network, are reported at link)

On September 22, Sproul and Associates did the same thing in Oregon.  (See link).  This is a plain violation of Oregon law, according to Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury in an interview with Northwest Cable News.  (link).  It also appears that another Republican group engaged in “bait and switch registration”, at least according to the Daily Vanguard today.  (link)

Yesterday evening, CBS reported that an organization in Nevada called Voters Outreach America was THROWING OUT registration forms filled out by people trying to register to vote as Democrats.  (See link).  The American Prospect has reported that Voters Outreach America is under contract with Sproul & Associates.  (link).

And then, of course, there is the widely-reported story from South Dakota, where the nephew of Thune, the Republican challenger to Tom Daschle, has been caught fraudulently obtaining absentee ballots for Republicans.  A criminal investigation is pending.  (link).

What it appears here is that there are reliable reports of GOP operatives in at least SIX states engaging in sytematic and repeated attempts at voter fraud.  From only registering republicans, to falsifying absentee ballot requests, to destroying democratic voter applications, this appears to be a coordinated effort at all levels to swing the election illegally to the Republicans.  In fact, things are so bad that former SD goveror Janklow has issued a public statement saying that the national GOP is encouraging voter fraud. (http://www.keloland.com/NewsDetail2817.cfm?Id=22,35248"]link[/url]).