Occasionally, one has the sense of being in the right place at the right time, or having said or done the right thing at the most propitious of moments. Perhaps kismet is the personification or actualization of this sense. In retrospect, last week’s post is tinged with irony, and filled with kismet.
Now I understand full well, the Presidential Debates begin tonight with the first of three debates, plus a tilt between Vice Presidential candidates. This evening's event, focused on Domestic Policy, will convene at the University of Denver, located in Denver, Colorado. Air time is 9:00 p.m. Eastern. The coverage and the fully amplified aftermath (who won, who lost, etc.) will dominate the airways, at least for political news, for a day. Friday will bring a fresh new topic; the release of the September Jobs Report. In related news, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised job growth numbers for the year upward by more than 450,000 jobs. The number is still not enough, though it does provide good news for the Obama Administration. POTUS has now seen more jobs added than have been lost, during his term in office. But that is then; this is now.
Right now, my focus is on extending the conversation started in the previous blog post. Last Wednesday, in a thorough fashion, Break It Down explored the notion, posited most aggressively by the GOP, that voter fraud is a serious and widespread problem. Moreover, if you listen to the relentless drum beat on the Right, what you hear is that the insidious behavior is the singular purview of the poor, minorities, and that olio of humanity we have come to know, in the last 30 days, as the 47%. Hence, the brilliant and timely Republican rescue plan; a series of new voter fraud laws, aimed mainly, and ever so coincidentally, at political swingstates with GOP state legislatures.
Briefly, the predominance of data shows, as noted in last week’s post, it is a solution in search of a problem. At least, it was! Word has emerged from Florida that a consulting firm DBA (Doing Business As), Strategic AlliedConsulting, tasked by the RepublicanNational Committee (RNC) and the Florida GOP with leading voter registration activities in the state, has been terminated after having been accused of…drum roll please…fraudulent voter registration activities (which while different from voter fraud, is as close as we’ve come). Remember, actual voter fraud is quite rare. Voter registration fraud, not so much; low wage workers are given taxing quotas, and frequently resort to questionable tactics. They then, after a short time, usually before getting caught, move on to other jobs.
Strategic Allied Consulting was formed and headed by Republican consultant, Nathan Sproul. Mr. Sproul took on the assignment of conducting voter registration and turnout activities in several key contested states, including, voter registration in:
1. Florida
2. Virginia
3. North Carolina
4. Colorado
5. Nevada
And Get-Out-The-Vote activities in:
Sproul and
the Republican National Committee (RNC) wanted to preempt push back stemming from similar controversy experienced by the
Lincoln Strategy Group, another of his
companies. He told the Tampa Bay Times he
formed Strategic Allied Consulting at
the request of the RNC, for
publicity’s sake. Previous negative
media coverage had accrued to Lincoln stemming from past allegations going back to 2004,
when employees in Nevada
and Oregon
In 2004, employees of Lincoln
- Destroying voter
registration forms of Democrats
- Duping college students into registering as Republicans
- Refusing to register Democrats or independents
At that time, several
states, Nevada ,
Oregon , and Arizona
Mr. Sproul has also been linked to
signature fraud this election cycle
in his home state of Arizona where he
was working on a ballot initiative
that would allow the state to nullify
any federal laws it finds to be unconstitutional. The man gets around.
As it relates to the recent
events, the RNC hired Sproul and his firm during the
summer. Strategic Allied Consulting was the only vendor hired by the National
Republican Party to conduct voter
registration and turnout
activities in seven battleground states. They were paid $3 million by the RNC for this exclusive privilege.
That does not include the $1.3
million paid by the state of Florida
In Colorado, the Republican
Party terminated its contract with Strategic
Allied Consulting after a young woman was shown registering voters outside a Colorado Springs grocery store in a YouTube video, in which she admits to trying to only
register voters who support Mitt Romney. The woman, a contract employee of Sproul’s company, could be heard saying:
“I’m actually trying to register
people for a particular party, because we’re out here in support of Romney,
actually.” The video has been viewed more than
417,000 times. The Colorado
In
Those five forms were
submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting.
The firm was paid by Republicans to
register new voters in battleground states.
Michael Dickerson, Mecklenburg County’s Elections Director noted the Board of Elections has also received one
questionable voter registration from a group backing President Obama.
Perhaps the single most
revealing indicator of how ensconced Sproul and his firm are in GOP political circles is that he has
ties to Willard Romney and his
campaign. FederalElection Commission (FEC) reports show that Sproul’s other company, Lincoln Strategy Group, was paid more
than $80,000 by the Romney campaign
to help register voters between November
2011 and March 2012. This period was part of the GOP Primary
season.
All in all, I still do not expect voter
fraud to play a huge role in Election 2012. However, to the extent it
does, if current events prove relevant, we should all beware of the potential
for a healthy dose of GOP legerdemain.
"Did Someone Say Voter Fraud? Oops, there It Is; Sort of!" I’m done; holla
back!PS.
Just in case you care about these kinds of things, today is President Obama and Michelle’s 20th wedding anniversary, so Happy Anniversary to POTUS and FLOTUS.
Just in case you care about these kinds of things, today is President Obama and Michelle’s 20th wedding anniversary, so Happy Anniversary to POTUS and FLOTUS.
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