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发帖数: 4321 | 1 http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Elections/2012/0929/Potential-vote
Potential voter registration fraud in Florida: GOP’s own 'ACORN' scandal?
The Republican Party fired a voter registration contractor this week after
the firm turned in illegible, incorrect, and falsified voter registration
forms to Florida election officials.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / September 29, 2012
A supporter of Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney attends a campaign rally in Sarasota, Florida,
September 20, 2012.
Jim Young/REUTERS
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The Republican Party promptly fired a voter registration contractor this
week after the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, turned in illegible,
incorrect, and falsified voter registration forms to Florida election
officials.
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Saying the party has “zero tolerance” for voter fraud, the GOP also filed
complaints against the company with the Florida Secretary of State’s office
. The company, run by long-time GOP operative Nathan Sproul, says a single
employee was responsible for the forged signatures, though the problem, by
Friday, had spread to 10 counties.
"This is an issue we take extremely seriously," RNC spokesman Sean Spicer
told CBS News. "When allegations were brought to our attention we severed
all ties to the firm."
While reasonable, those explanations could have trouble finding traction
among the US electorate, which has watched battles erupt in mostly swing
states from Florida to Ohio over control of voter rolls, and heated debates
about potential disenfranchisement of key Democratic constituencies, poorer,
minority, and elderly voters.
Why do Election 2012 swing states matter? 5 resources to explain.
The allegations are particularly poignant in Florida, which decided the
presidential race in 2000 after a massive recount was halted by the US
Supreme Court in a way that gave the election to the GOP, and where the
current Republican state administration has fought with the US Department of
Justice over an effort to weed out illegal immigrants from the state’s
voter rolls.
Even more to the point of third-party voter registration contractors, the
League of Women Voters sued Florida earlier this month after it instituted a
new 48-hour deadline for turning in registration forms. The state relented,
reinstating a 10-day deadline.
What’s more, the fraudulent registration findings have echoes of the 2008
controversies over the now-disbanded ACORN community activism group, which
was accused by Republicans in 2008 of falsifying forms.
Brad Friedman, who runs the electoral watchdog Brad Blog, helped break the
story, tying it to other emerging GOP registration controversies in
California and Colorado. Other states where Sproul’s firm had been hired to
gather registrations have not reported any problems.
“A massive GOP voter registration scheme, which appears to involve the
upper-echelons of the national party, [has begun] to emerge,” Mr. Friedman
writes. |
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