Republican Voter Suppression Efforts

Apparently, Someone Took Him Aside and Explained a Few Things

Apparently, Someone Took Him Aside and Explained a Few Things

Scott Keyes of ThinkProgress brings the lede:

After previously trying to restrict early voting, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) today reversed course on his decision to block county boards of elections from setting their own early voting hours in the days leading up to the November election.​

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted wanted to change the way Ohioans vote. A Republican county chairman with a vote on the elections board actually went so far as to explain that it really was about black people. At issue was early voting, when districts using ballot boxes open the polls before election day. What essentially happened was that the Secretary of State wanted two early-voting standards, one for Ohioans in the military, and one for everyone else. By the Republican argument, it was less complicated to have two standards than one. And, yes, that argument did, in fact, result in one Doug Preisse, a county Republican chairman and member of the elections board who voted to reduce early voting, explaining, "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine. Let's be fair and reasonable."

For reasons that should be obvious, U.S. District Court Judge Peter Economus disagreed with the Secretary of State's logic.

On a national level, Republicans tried to turn the situation into a claim that President Obama was trying to take away the rights of voters in the military.

Yes. Really. They actually tried that talking point.

The problem with making the issue a prominent talking point was that it made Judge Economus' decision that much more visible.

"The only hindrance to (military) early voting," Economus wrote, "is the Secretary of State's failure to set uniform hours at elections boards during the last three days before Election Day. On balance, the right of Ohio voters to vote in person during the last three days prior to Election Day—a right previously conferred to all voters by the State—outweighs the State's interest in setting the 6 p.m. Friday deadline."

Husted decided to appeal the ruling. Therefore, according to his office's logic, they could just ignore the judge's order to restore early voting to its prior form. In fact, he went so far as to issue Directive 2012-40, which instructed county elections offices to ignore the judge's order. A spokesman for Husted's office explained that they did not think the Directive conflicted with the judge's order.

For reasons that should be obvious, Judge Economus disagreed, and summoned Husted himself to appear before the court.

Today, the Ohio Secretary of State issued Directive 2012-42, rescinding 2012-40, and apologized to the court.

Apparently, someone in his office took him aside and explained a few things about how it would actually go if he didn't back down and respect the court's order.
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Notes:

Keyes, Scott. "Ohio Secretary Of State Backs Down, Allows Local Officials To Set Early Voting Hours". ThinkProgress. September 7, 2012. ThinkProgress.org. September 7, 2012. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/09/07/814821/jon-husted-backs-down/
 
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A Predictable Scandal

A Predictable Scandal: GOP Hires Dubious Firms, Finds Itself In Voter Registration Debacle

Gary Fineout brings the lede:

What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has now spread statewide, with election officials in nine counties informing prosecutors or state election officials about questionable voter registration forms filled out on behalf of the Republican Party of Florida.​

Okay, so here's the problem.

Imagine that in a prior election, you hired a firm to help with your voter registration drive. Now imagine that a whistleblower exposed that firm to be destroying opposition voter registrations instead of properly submitting them. So then imagine that you responded to this by declaring political war against a minority-oriented community organization that was registering voters for the opposition. Indeed, imagine that the countercampaign worked, and the opposition-sympathetic organization was destroyed.

You got away with one.

It's a new election. You need help with your voter registration drive. So ... who do you hire?

Maybe the same people who got busted actually destroying voter registrations last time?

That's right. The GOP hired Nathan Sproul. Again.

And if you might imagine such a move might be unwise, you would be correct. Steve Benen offers one narrative:

So far in 2012, the RNC has paid Strategic Allied Consulting $2.9 million for its services to the national party, as well as state affiliates. The relationship, however, has been severed in light of the firm's alleged crimes.

So, to review the larger context, the Republican National Committee was apoplectic in accusing groups like ACORN of overseeing fraudulent voter-registration efforts, and at the same time, the Republican National Committee paid millions to a Republican firm that's accused of overseeing fraudulent voter-registration efforts.

A Republican elections supervisor in the Florida panhandle said, "It's kind of ironic that the dead people they accused ACORN of registering are now being done by the [Republican Party of Florida]."

Yes, actually, it is kind of ironic.

But wait, it gets worse.

Nathan Sproul, who was also hired by the Romney campaign to help with "field consulting," is not new to controversy. On the contrary, Sproul had already been accused of massive voter registration fraud in several states, long before the 2012 cycle.

According to campaign finance records, a joint committee of the McCain-Palin campaign, the RNC and the California Republican Party, made a $175,000 payment to the group Lincoln Strategy in June for purposes of "registering voters." The managing partner of that firm is Nathan Sproul, a renowned GOP operative who has been investigated on multiple occasions for suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and even spearheading efforts to get Ralph Nader on ballots to hinder the Democratic ticket.

In a letter to the Justice Department last October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said that that Sproul's alleged activities "clearly suppress votes and violate the law."

That Sproul would come under the employment umbrella of the McCain campaign -- the Republican National Committee has also separately paid Lincoln Strategy at least $37,000 for voter registration efforts this cycle -- is not terribly surprising. Sproul, who has donated nearly $30,000 to McCain's campaign, has been in the good graces of GOP officials for the past decade despite charges of ethical and potentially legal wrongdoing.​

Rep. Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican, once said, "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."​

And while Sean Spicer of the RNC congratulated the party for acting "swiftly and boldly" upon learning of the allegations, one might be reasonably inclined to wonder why they hired Sproul instead of, oh, I don't know, someone who hasn't been busted defrauding voter registration before?

In a year when the GOP is trying to make voting rights a central issue, this just isn't going to help their cause.
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Notes:

Fineout, Gary. "Voter registration problems widening in Florida". Associated Press. September 28, 2012. MSNBC.MSN.com. September 28, 2012. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49213312

Benen, Steve. "RNC caught up in election fraud controversy". The Maddow Blog. September 28, 2012. MaddowBlog.MSNBC.com. September 28, 2012. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/28/14138942-rnc-caught-up-in-election-fraud-controversy
 
CSM: GOP "ACORN" Comparison

CSM: GOP "ACORN" Comparison​

Patrik Jonsson reports, for The Christian Science Monitor:

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.

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.​

I suppose the question our Republican neighbors need to answer is simple enough:

• How do you want to handle this? Should we treat SAC the way Republicans treated ACORN after the 2008 election? Or would you prefer that the issue be addressed in a more responsible way? That is, should two wrongs make a right, or are we expected to let Republicans skate away from their own standards?​

There are certainly serious suppression implications in SAC's alleged conduct:

It's far from clear whether the registrations would have led to voter fraud, or if they were simply attempts by employees to show that they'd done their jobs. That point may be underscored by the amateurish nature of the fraud.

Problems included the lack of Social Security numbers, fake house numbers, and dates of birth that didn't match the name.

"It was that flagrant," elections supervisor Ann W. Bodenstein told the Los Angeles Times. "In no way did they look genuine. Anyone with any sense would have known there was something wrong."

Palm Beach County election supervisor Susan Bucher told the Brad Blog on Friday that the activity could lead to disenfranchisement.

"If they're changing your address from your real address, and you did not submit that, somebody was submitting it on your behalf in a false manner, then on Election Day you will not appear on the voter rolls and you're going to have to vote a provisional ballot," she says, adding that if the voter is not at the correct polling precinct "we can't [by law] ... count your ballot."

"It's certainly very concerning as we move towards the registration deadline in a very important presidential election in the swing-state of Florida," she added.​

The thing is that before they hired Sproul for the current cycle, Republicans already knew his firms behaved this way. The issue came up in 2008, but, for whatever reasons, Sproul was given something of a pass while the nation obsessed over a minority-oriented community service organization.

The GOP cannot say, "We didn't know!" They knew.

So what do we do now?

Shall we crucify Sproul, and cheer every underhanded attempt to destroy him and his companies? Or should we work toward a more meaningful, useful, and responsible outcome?

Do Republicans want to answer under their own standard? Or would they prefer that others do unto them far better than they do unto others?
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Notes:

Jonsson, Patrik. "Potential voter registration fraud in Florida: GOP's own 'ACORN' scandal?" The Christian Science Monitor. September 29, 2012. CSMonitor.com. September 29, 2012. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Electi...tion-fraud-in-Florida-GOP-s-own-ACORN-scandal
 
Republican Voter Reg Reels Under Weight of Scandal

Republican Voter Reg Reels Under Weight of Scandal

All those who took the right wing's ACORN bait ought to be ashamed of themselves.

As we are aware, in 2004, the GOP hired an operative named Nathan Sproul to help with their voter registration efforts. A whistleblower at one of Sproul's firms exposed fraudulent practices, including the destruction of Democratic voters' registrations. The GOP, in 2008, targeted ACORN, denouncing the organization for voter registration fraud, and eventually capitalizing on a right-wing, lawbreaking frame job that destroyed it.

Nathan Sproul and his firms' known voter registration fraud?

Forgotten.

Well, except by the GOP. We'll come back to that in a moment.

In the current cycle, the Republican Party decided it was a good idea to hire Sproul again.

And, well, as we are aware, that didn't go so well.

The scandal of Sproul's firms tampering with, and even destroying, voter registrations in the 2012 cycle is spreading, and has forced the Republican National Committee to end voter registration in several battleground states:

The Republican National Committee ended efforts to sign up new voters before the deadline in key states for the presidential race because of questions raised over registration applications tied to the party.

Republican parties in Florida, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia—all states that both campaigns view as competitive—fired Glen Allen, Virginia-based Strategic Allied Consulting, the company in charge of registrations, said Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. The national committee also canceled its contract with the company, its only vendor signing up new voters, Kukowski said.

The five states have registration deadlines from Oct. 6 to Oct. 15. Stopping efforts before then could hurt Republican nominee Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama, said Lance deHaven-Smith, a Florida State University political science professor in Tallahassee.

"In any swing state that's going to be significant because these elections are so close," deHaven-Smith said. "This gives an advantage to Obama."

(Bender)​

Spokeswoman Kukowski suggests the early end of Republican voter registration won't have any impact: "It was wrapping up at the same time this happened, so there is no impact," she explained.

As anyone who has participated in a voter registration drive knows, the last week before the deadline is actually a powerful harvest.

One might think it strange to consider that the GOP had no backup plan, no second tier for the voter registration effort. But it's not so strange when we look into the detail. That is to say, despite RNC spokesman Sean Spicer's statement that the GOP has "zero tolerance" for fraud, one must consider not only the fact that they hired Sproul for the current cycle, but also that they apparently did so mindful of the previous problems:

Strategic Allied Consulting was hired to do voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada, and had been planning get-out-the-vote drives in Ohio and Wisconsin, according to Sproul.

Sproul owns another company, Lincoln Strategy Group, that was paid about $70,000 by the Mitt Romney campaign during the primaries to gather signatures. He said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the request of the Republican National Committee because of the bad publicity stemming from the past allegations. In 2004, there were allegations in states such as Nevada and Oregon that employees of his firm—which had a similar contract with the RNC—registered Democratic voters and then destroyed their forms. (Sproul noted that no criminal charges were ever filed.)

Strategic Allied was set up at an address in Glen Allen, Va., and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.

"In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company's name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet," Sproul said.

(Tanfani et al.)​

Yes, really. In 2008, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) explained, in 2008: "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out."

Naturally, the McCain campaign hired Sproul for the 2008 campaign.

Yes, really.

The year of the ACORN.

It's not a hard pattern to see:

• 2004: Sproul firms busted tampering with and destroying voter registration.

• 2008: Sproul hired; ACORN accused. Obama wins election. Illegal frame-up of ACORN on unrelated issues destroys the organization.

• 2012: Sproul hired, firms structured to hide his involvement and distance him and the GOP from prior scandals.​

They never had an alternative. No backup plan. No reserve operation. Sproul is busted, and voter registration ends a week early in several electoraly important states.

Yet Spicer insists that the GOP has a zero tolerance outlook toward voter registration fraud.

Which is why they hired a known fraudster. And didn't put together an alternative in case things fell apart.

And tried to hide his association with the project.

And now want us to believe that it's no big deal.

Meanwhile, the stakes are huge:

Palm Beach County election supervisor Susan Bucher told the Brad Blog on Friday that the activity could lead to disenfranchisement.

"If they're changing your address from your real address, and you did not submit that, somebody was submitting it on your behalf in a false manner, then on Election Day you will not appear on the voter rolls and you're going to have to vote a provisional ballot," she says, adding that if the voter is not at the correct polling precinct "we can't [by law] ... count your ballot."

"It's certainly very concerning as we move towards the registration deadline in a very important presidential election in the swing-state of Florida," she added.

(Jonnson; boldface accent added)​

There is, of course, a bit of irony in all this; as Michael Bender reports for Bloomberg:

The suspicious forms were linked to the party because of new requirements under a 2011 law signed by Republican Governor Rick Scott. Democrats said the law, which put new regulations on signing up voters, was written to create hurdles for Obama's re- election and favor Republicans. Republicans who control the Legislature said the law was needed to combat voter fraud.​

There is a political axiom that suggests one should take his own weakness and make it a strength by projecting the weakness onto the opponent. Republicans have often made this a centerpiece during the Rovian era.

And now we see how ACORN fit into that scheme. In 2004, the Republicans hired a fraudster who got busted. In 2008, they hired him again, and gave cover by attacking ACORN. In 2012, they hired him again, specifically trying to hide his involvement, and all while trying to suppress the Democratic vote under the guise of solving a nearly-nonexistent problem.

Look at the birdie! Look at the ACORN! Look at the illegal immigrants wrecking out election! No, don't look at our professional voter registration fraudmeister! We have zero tolerance for voter registration fraud!

Look, this Republican movement about election fraud is just a smokescreen. The number of people who have taken the bait over the years? Well, that's kind of embarrassing for our society, isn't it?

It would be a lot easier to accept that Republicans were working to combat electoral fraud if the number of people they would unnecessarily disenfranchise was remotely proportionate to the number of fraudulent votes they would prevent. But it's not even close.

And it would be a lot easier to accept that Republicans were working to combat electoral fraud if they weren't hiring a known fraudster whose firm has once again been busted for voter registration fraud.

They knew. They knew who they were hiring. They knew his history. They calculated to hide that history.

And why not? They are Republicans, after all. Quite clearly, this is what they do, and how they do it.
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Notes:

Bender, Michael C. "Republicans End Swing-State Voter Sign-Up After Firing Company". Bloomberg. September 30, 2012. Bloomberg.com. October 1, 2012. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...state-voter-sign-up-after-firing-company.html

Tanfani, Joseph, Melanie Mason, and Matea Gold. "RNC cuts ties to firm after voter fraud allegations". Los Angeles Times. September 27, 2012. LATimes.com. October 1, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-republicans-voter-fraud-florida-20120927,0,5472858.story

Jonsson, Patrik. "Potential voter registration fraud in Florida: GOP's own 'ACORN' scandal?" The Christian Science Monitor. October 1, 2012. CSMonitor.com. September 29, 2012. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Electi...tion-fraud-in-Florida-GOP-s-own-ACORN-scandal
 
Pennsylvania: Voter ID Law On Hold

Pennsylvania: Voter ID Law On Hold

The word in from Marc Levy of Associated Press:

A judge on Tuesday blocked Pennsylvania's divisive voter identification requirement from going into effect on Election Day, delivering a hard-fought victory to Democrats who said it was a ploy to defeat President Barack Obama and other opponents who said it would prevent the elderly and minorities from voting.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson said in his ruling that he was concerned by the state's stumbling efforts to create a photo ID that is easily accessible to voters and that he could not rely on the assurances of government officials at this late date that every voter would be able to get a valid ID.

If it stands, it is good news for Obama's chances in Pennsylvania, one of the nation's biggest electoral college prizes, unless Republicans and the tea party groups that backed the law find a way to use it to motivate their supporters and possibly independents.

Simpson's ruling could be appealed to the state Supreme Court, although state officials weren't ready to say Tuesday whether they would appeal. He based his decision on guidelines given to him days ago by the high court justices, and it could easily be the final word on the law just five weeks before the Nov. 6 election.

Simpson's ruling will allow the law to go into full effect next year, though he could still decide later to issue a permanent injunction.​

In August, the courts approved Pennsylvania's voter ID law, largely taking on faith that the state, with no plan in place to get identification to voters, could actually pull off that feat. The appeal went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which in September ruled that, while commonwealth officials were doubtless making good-faith efforts, it still had doubts about whether reasonable accommodation of otherwise valid voters without identification was possible. The ruling sent the case back to Judge Simpson on those grounds. Today's ruling affirms those concerns and puts the voter ID law—which the Republican Speaker of the House, State Rep. Mike Turzai, explicitly told supporters was intended to "allow Mitt Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania".

While there is still time for the commonwealth to appeal the ruling, it is unclear whether they will do so; that appeal would go straight back to the Supreme Court that expressed its doubts about the feasibility of the law.

For now, it appears that the voter ID law is suspended for the present election, and can be enforced next year. The court does reserve its authority to issue a permanent injunction at a later date.

Pennsylvania Republican Party chairman Rob Gleason denounced concerns about disenfranchisement as "empty rhetoric", and insisted that "this legislation is still about ensuring one person, one vote".
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Notes:

Levy, Marc. "Judge halts Pa.'s tough new voter ID requirement". Associated Press. October 2, 2012. MSNBC.MSN.com. October 2, 2012. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49252156

Simpson, Robert. "Memorandum Opinion". Applewhite et al. v. Pennsylvania et al. Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. October 2, 2012. PACourts.us. October 2, 2012. http://www.pacourts.us/NR/rdonlyres...375C10/0/CMWSuppDetAppPrelInjOrder_100212.pdf
 
Now that the state courts have ruled against Republican voter suppression, I guess the next question is will Republicans engage the Republican controlled United States Supreme Court to push their voter suppression efforts over the goal line as they did in 2000?
 
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This Isn't Over

Well, come on. They're Republicans. This isn't over.
 
The Vote Suppression Question

The Vote Suppression Question

Twelve and a half minutes of your time, in case you're wondering why Democrats and their supporters are more than a little frustrated with their conservative neighbors' voting-law hijinks: TRMS Oct. 2, 2012: "Fake I.D."

See, the thing is that Republicans are demonstrating behavioral patterns that aren't hard to see. The only real question is what that behavior means.

Given Pennsylvania Speaker Mike Turzai's boast, considering Ohio Secretary of State Husted's nearly-contemptuous two-step with the courts, accounting for the Florida voter purge that has falsely accused more qualified voters than discovered illegals, and especially when we pause to note that the GOP's voter registration firm has just been caught altering and destroying registrations?

Yeah, there's a reason a lot of people don't believe this is about protecting electoral integrity.
 
And Now for Something Completely ... er ... um ... Yeah

And Now for Something Completely ... er ... um ... Yeah

Let's just go to Michael Van Sickler for the update:

Nathan Sproul was hardly unknown when his firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, was hired over the summer to register voters for the Republican Party.

In 2004, employees with his previous firms were accused of a wide assortment of infractions: destroying voter registration forms of Democrats, duping college students into registering as Republicans, refusing to register Democrats or independents. Nevada, Oregon and Arizona opened investigations but closed them without charging anyone.

On Tuesday, new details emerged that Strategic Allied Consulting knew of problems in Florida weeks ago in what is now a case of possible voter registration fraud in a dozen counties ....

.... Company representatives have said they kept Florida Republicans informed once they were alerted of questionable registration forms in Palm Beach County and fired the employee responsible on Sept. 18.

Republicans say they didn't hear about the flawed forms until a week later when told about them by a Palm Beach Post reporter.

But Cheryl Johnson, Lee County's voter registration director, told the Times/Herald on Tuesday that she noticed some odd applications that came quite a bit earlier, on Aug. 28. It looked like someone had checked Republican in a number of party registration boxes in a manner that didn't match the way the rest of the application was filled out. Four of the forms appeared to have been filled out by the same person.

Johnson called the person who dropped them off, a Strategic Allied Consulting employee named Danielle Alvarez. On Sept. 6 — 12 days before they learned about the Palm Beach forms — Johnson met with Alvarez and a man named Jack Reed.

"They said they were shocked," Johnson said. "They told me that they fired someone and it wouldn't happen again."

Johnson said they took copies of the questionable forms and promised they would call back. But that was the last Johnson heard from them.​

In defense of Sproul, SAC, and the RNC, we should note that Republicans say they didn't hear about the problem until September 18, and a spokesman for Sproul's company said last week that they were unaware of the Lee County issue that. In other words, Republicans didn't know there was a problem, and the voter registration director for Lee County is lying.

That's the counterpoint.

Oh, right. And Sproul himself says the only reason Democrats don't like his firm is because it is effective.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party of Florida has filed an election fraud complaint against SAC, and the state of Florida is investigating the issue as a criminal matter.
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Notes:

Van Sickler, Michael. "Firm hired by Florida GOP knew weeks ago of possibly fraudulent voter registrations". Tampa Bay Times. October 3, 2012. TampaBay.com. October 3, 2012. http://www.tampabay.com/news/politi...he-first-sign-of-trouble-for-gop-firm/1254517
 
New Mexico: Sandoval County GOP Caught Organizing Voter Suppression

New Mexico: Sandoval County GOP Caught Organizing Voter Suppression

If I do my best Diamond Joe impression and say, "That was unexpected," it is only because the Republican Party in Sandoval County ... um ... er ... something goes here about being stupidly brazen:

New Mexico Attorney General Gary King has launched an investigation into a video that allegedly shows Republican officials giving volunteer poll watchers false information about state election law, his office announced Tuesday.

A video brought to light by ProgressNow New Mexico shows a Republican poll watcher training session the liberal group said was “replete with misinformation about ID requirements, the use of provisional ballots, assistance for Spanish-speaking citizens, change of address requirements, and the rights of the disabled at the polls.”

King, a Democrat running for governor in 2014, said he was looking into sanctions against anyone found guilty of voter suppression.

“I will not tolerate voter suppression efforts by anyone, period,” King said in a statement. “We have received a number of complaints since last Friday that there seems to be a concerted effort afoot to discourage some New Mexicans from exercising their right to vote this November. My office is committed to helping ensure fair elections by working to put an immediate stop to such misinformation and publicly correcting what has already been disseminated.”

(Reilly)​

Lee Fang of The Nation offers some detail:

The poll watchers are told to request identification from voters, even though the law in New Mexico does not require voter ID. There are other troubling parts of the video and poll watcher instruction manual, including a call for poll watchers to instruct some voters to vote by provisional ballot even if they are registered correctly in their precinct. Poll watchers are told to deceive Spanish-speaking voters by telling them ballots that interpreters are not available, when in fact New Mexico law provides for language assistance for minorities and Spanish-language ballots.

At CPAC Colorado, a conservative conference today in Denver, I asked Congressman Steve Pearce, a Republican lawmaker who represents New Mexico, about the brewing controversy.

“We’re simply saying that we’re going to start, we’re going to take it back it into our hands,” said Pearce. “We should check for ID since you have to show an ID to do anything in America.”

He did, however, admit that doing so would be against the law. “It’s against New Mexico law to check for ID,” the congressman conceded.

Wouldn’t having scores of Republican poll watchers requesting voter ID even though there’s no legal requirement for an ID cause confusion? “What do you think these poll watchers should do if someone refuses to show identification?” I asked.

“I just think we need to be asking the question,” replied Pearce. “I don’t think New Mexicans know how many people vote illegally.

I pressed him again. Wouldn’t it cause confusion with poll watchers telling people they need an ID to vote even though they don’t?

“It all comes down to judges and all that stuff—that’s sort of out of my area,” said Pearce.​

The problem with Pearce's claim is that last year, Secretary of State Dianna Duran, a Republican, released a report suggesting there was little evidence of widespread vote fraud in the state. Keesha Gaskins of The Brennan Center reported in December that after matching 117 voter registrations to people who had foreign identification; in the end, the list was whittled down to nineteen:

Of the 19 voters who appeared on both the voter registration list and the foreign-national credentialed driver’s license list, Secretary Duran’s office identified nine people who voted prior to applying for a driver’s license using foreign national documentation. Secretary Duran does not, however, provide information on how she matched those nine persons between the lists. Given a large enough pool, a matching name and birthdate are not enough to ensure that it is the same person on both lists – at least not without using unique identifying numbers on both lists, which she did not do. Moreover, even an address check cannot avoid problems with duplication of name, missing suffixes or prefixes, or even errors in the pollbooks. For the remaining 10 voters who Secretary Duran identified as registered to vote and who voted sometime after obtaining a driver’s license with foreign-national credentials, it is important to note that in the initial review of the voter file, Secretary Duran compared voting records between 2003 and 2010. During that same period 13,205 New Mexico residents became U.S. citizens.The potential for overlap here is not accounted for in her allegations.

From the analysis the Secretary of State has presented, there have been a number of problems at the different levels of administration that handle voter registration forms. One of the complaints from the Secretary is the use of “dummy” social security numbers, as their system will not accept an application without a social security number and so some officials used other numbers and added zeros to override that feature. Correcting this problem would be a clear first step towards preventing further confusion in the state’s voting rolls. The Secretary blames provisions of the NVRA for encouraging non-citizens to register to vote by offering them a registration form at the DMV and when applying for public benefits. Both requirements have proven to be highly successful measures that have increased access to voter registration among eligible American citizens. If New Mexico can devise and follow more effective protocols for registering new voters, then people registering who are not eligible will not be an issue.​

Naturally, the Sandoval County GOP's answer to the issue was to train poll workers to intentionally deceive voters, and, apparently, get caught on video doing so.

It is worth noting that Fang updated his article: "The state New Mexico GOP's communications director, Jamie Dickerman, contacted the Nation to clarify that this poll watcher training was not authorized by the state party and only involved leaders of the Sandoval County Republican Party." Additionally, Rep. Pearce, having seen the video, now condemns the Sandoval GOP's actions.
____________________

Notes:

Reilly, Ryan J. "N.M. Attorney General Investigating GOP ‘Voter Suppression’". TPM Muckraker. October 10, 2012. TPMMuckraker.TalkingPointsMemo.com. October 12, 2012. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/10/new_mexico_gary_king_voter_intimidation.php

Fang, Lee. "New Mexico Congressman Agrees With Voter Suppression Tactics". The Nation. October 4, 2012. TheNation.com. October 12, 2012. http://www.thenation.com/blog/17036...an-agrees-voter-suppression-tactics-his-state

Gaskins, Keesha. "NM: Scant Evidence of Fraud, But Plenty of Voter Registration Glitches". The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. December 12, 2011. BrennanCenter.org. October 12, 2012. http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/a...ud_but_plenty_of_voter_registration_glitches/
 
Husted Loses

Sides of History

Joepistole said:

Sure enough, Ohio Secretary of State, Husted, is seeking the aide of his fellow Republican colleagues on the US Supreme Court to suppress votes in the State of Ohio.
Click to expand...

And today, he lost. It's over.

Greg Stohr, for Bloomberg:

The U.S. Supreme Court gave President Barack Obama’s campaign a legal victory in the pivotal state of Ohio today, backing early-voting rights for the weekend before the Nov. 6 election.

The justices rejected a bid by Ohio Republicans to limit the early voting on those days to members of the military. The rebuff came in a one-line order, with no published dissent.

Democrats and Republicans have jockeyed for months in Ohio over early voting, an option that favored Democratic candidates in 2010 and 2006, according to a 2010 study by the University of Akron. A trial judge cited an estimate that 100,000 Ohioans would vote in the three days leading up to Election Day.​

And lost with that decision is the Republican talking point that depicted President Obama as trying to strip military servicepeople of their right to vote. You know, the whole shaky one that went:

• Ohio restricts early voting, but excepts members of the military.

• Obama campaign makes equal protection appeal against restrictions.

• Republicans presume Ohio will win in court or lose partway in which the courts hold the military to the new standard set for everyone else.

• ∴ Obama is attacking military voters.​

The outcome that actually occurred, near as anyone can tell, was nowhere on the Republican map. Some might think that omission strange, since it was, logically speaking, the most apparent possible outcome: A single standard for everyone that allows the most time.

No, really, this made its way into the presidential discourse in August:

... voting rights in Ohio have been a mess in recent cycles, and new voter-suppression tactics imposed by state Republican lawmakers are inviting "chaos" at the polls this fall. Of particular interest is a state policy that restricts early-voting rights: active-duty troops can vote up to three days before Election Day, but no one else.

To that end, President Obama's campaign filed a lawsuit a few weeks ago, asking a federal court to "restore in-person early voting for all Ohioans during the three days prior to Election Day." Three weeks later, Romney came up with a new response to the lawsuit, posting this message to Facebook:

"President Obama's lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state's early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I'm entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I'll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them."​

Got that? Obama wants all eligible Ohio voters, including servicemen and women, to have the same ability to vote, which Romney says, in writing, means Obama is trying to "undermine" the troops' ability to vote.

This is as loathsome a lie as Romney has told all year -- and given his record, that's not an easy threshold to meet.

(Benen)​

So not only has this been an inept attempt by Republicans to subvert the voting process in Ohio, it's also an inept attempt by the Romney campaign to lie.

It's hard to figure who should be more embarrassed. Husted tried to dance a contemptuous line with the courts before losing. Republicans tried to construct a lie around an ill-conceived tactic. The people of Ohio actually elected Husted.

Call it what you will But it's been fashionable in recent years to talk about the sides of history. Husted and the Republicans, quite clearly, landed on the wrong side. Of course, that's also where they started, so ... er ... um ... yeah.
____________________

Notes:

Stohr, Greg. "Ohio Early Voting Cleared by High Court in Obama Victory". Blooomberg. October 16, 2012. Bloomberg.com. October 16, 2012. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...g-cleared-by-high-court-in-obama-victory.html

Benen, Steve. "Romney gets caught lying about Obama, military voters". The Maddow Blog. August 6, 2012. MaddowBlog.MSNBC.com. October 16, 2012. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2...gets-caught-lying-about-obama-military-voters
 
Tiassa said:
Sides of History

And today, he lost. It's over.
Click to expand...

That is good news for the people of Ohio and the nation. Had the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts, the US Supremes would have been put into the postition of reversing their Bush V. Gore decision that put George Junior into office.
 
Because You Just Can't Make This Up

Because You Just Can't Make This Up

Joseph Tanfani explains ... um ... something:

The political consultant fired by the Republican National Committee amid fraud allegations in Florida is now hiring workers for a voter canvassing operation this fall in as many as 30 states, his spokesman said.

Nathan Sproul, whose career as a GOP get-out-the-vote consultant has been dogged by reports of fraudulent registrations, has been advertising for $15-an-hour workers for "conservative voter identification" in Virginia, Wisconsin and Iowa ....

.... Sproul was hired this year by the RNC to register and canvass voters in eight swing states, under the name of Strategic Allied Consulting. Sproul told the Los Angeles Times that he set up that company because RNC officials, fearful of bad publicity, wanted to conceal his role in the operation.

Sean Spicer, an RNC spokesman, said that never happened. He said the party believed that Sproul had strong systems in place to prevent such problems, but dumped him after the allegations surfaced because it has "zero tolerance" for fraud ....

.... For the latest work, Sproul is using a company called Issue Advocacy Partners, set up in April at an attorney's office in Delaware. Like the company hired by the RNC, Strategic Allied Consulting, the Delaware company does not list Sproul's name as an officer.

This spring, Issue Advocacy Partners was paid $500,000 by the Wisconsin Republican Party for work during the recall race of Gov. Scott Walker, campaign finance reports show.

David Leibowitz, a Sproul spokesman, would not identify who's paying for the latest campaign, citing confidentiality agreements with the client, but said Issue Advocacy Partners isn't working for the Republican Party and isn't registering voters. He would not provide details about his new get-out-the-vote effort.

The RNC sent more than $3 million to state party committees to fund Sproul's get-out-the-vote efforts this year.​

At some point, it occurs to wonder just whose soul in the RNC Sproul has claim on. I sometimes hear this line in my head, from the movie Hoosiers: "Cletus musta owed you somethin' fierce!"

How ...? I mean ....

Why? Whathefuh?

Huh?

Did I read that wrongly?

What am I missing?
____________________

Notes:

Tanfani, Joseph. "Consultant fired by GOP in voter-fraud flap is hiring workers in canvassing effort". McClatchy. October 13, 2012. McClatchyDC.com. October 16, 2012. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/10/13/171446/consultant-fired-by-gop-in-voter.html
 
Yes, It Happened Again

Oh Come On ... Really?

Joseph Tanfani explains:

A man who was being paid to register voters by the Republican Party of Virginia was arrested Thursday after he was seen dumping eight registration forms into a dumpster.

Colin Small, 31, was working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee. Small, of Phoenixville, Pa., was first hired by Strategic Allied Consulting, a firm that was fired by the party after suspect voter forms surfaced in Florida and other states.

The owner of a store in Harrisonburg, Va., told a local television station that he became suspicious when he saw a car with Pennsylvania plates dump an envelope in back of his store. He recovered the envelope and alerted authorities.

"He made a mistake and he's being charged with it, which we fully support," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. The committee paid more than $3 million to state committees to finance the get-out-the-vote operation.

Strategic Allied is owned by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona political consultant for Republicans whose companies have faced charges in past elections of submitting forged forms and of dumping Democratic registrations. None of the charges were proved, and Sproul continues to do get-out-the-vote work for conservative causes this election.

"We can't speculate what happened in Virginia," said David Leibowitz, a spokesman for Sproul, adding that the firm was fired on Sept. 28. "Anything that happened after that did not happen on Strategic Allied's watch."​

An NBC News report suggests:

Sean Spicer, communications director for the RNC, told NBC News Thursday night that Small has now been fired as well, and that he had been directly employed by a payroll company called Pinpoint, which was previously used by Strategic Allied Consulting to pay workers for the GOP registration drive being run by the consulting company.​

So, basically, what we know is that someone connected to Nathan Sproul's operations for the GOP has been busted throwing away voter registration forms.

In other words, it's just another day in the Republican quest to promote electoral integrity.
____________________

Notes:

Tanfani, Joseph. "Man registering voters for GOP accused of tossing forms in trash". Los Angeles Times. October 18, 2012. LATimes.com. October 19, 2012. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-voter-registration-gop-arrest-20121018,0,5352175.story

Isikoff, Michael. "GOP registration worker charged with voter fraud". NBC Politics. October 19, 2012. NBCPolitics.NBCNews.com. October 19, 2012. http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_new...-registration-worker-charged-with-voter-fraud
 
how many people are denied their legal right to vote by republican voter suppression laws: 10 of thousands at the minimum.
How many cases of voting fraud are there: 10 not per a county or state but 10 across the entire country. seems to me it is about harming rights than protecting them.
 
Well, yeah

PJdude1219 said:

seems to me it is about harming rights than protecting them.
Click to expand...

Of course it is. They're Republicans.
 
Vote Suppression: Romney Campaign Is In

Vote Suppression: Romney Campaign Is In

The Romney/Ryan campaign anted into the GOP's vote suppression efforts. Scott Keyes explains for ThinkProgress:

Mitt Romney's campaign has been training poll watchers in Wisconsin with highly misleading — and sometimes downright false — information about voters' rights.

Documents from a recent Romney poll watcher training obtained by ThinkProgress contain several misleading or untrue claims about the rights of Wisconsin voters. A source passed along the following packet of documents, which was distributed to volunteers at a Romney campaign training in Racine on October 25th. In total, six such trainings were held across the state in the past two weeks.

One blatant falsehood occurs on page 5 of the training packet, which informed poll watchers that any "person [who] has been convicted of treason, a felony, or bribery" isn't eligible to vote. This is not true. Once a Wisconsin voter who has been convicted of a felony completes his or her sentence, that person is once again eligible to vote.

The training also encouraged volunteers to deceive election workers and the public about who they were associated with. On page 3 of the packet, Romney poll workers were instructed to hide their affiliation with the campaign and told to sign in at the polls as a "concerned citizen" instead. As Kristina Sesek, Romney's legal counsel who just graduated from Marquette Law School last year, explained, "We're going to have you sign in this election cycle as a ‘concerned citizen.' We're just trying to alleviate some of the animosity of being a Republican observer up front."​

Even the most generous interpretation, that this is somehow just a mistake, hurts Mitt Romney. That is to say, if Romney operatives are sent forward with "mistaken" information to involve themselves in one of the most important social rituals of the American society—voting—one can legitimately wonder when the Republican nominee and his staff will bother simply striving for perfection.

​

While it is true that people are human and humans imperfect, we do have certain general expectations. We would not expect a prosecutor to go forward at trial unaware that he was about to repeatedly suborn perjury in order to win. That is, there would come a point when one would suggest that you just have to know something is amiss.

But we've seen examples of this before, most recently in the presidential debates. Syria is Iran's route to the sea? Well, sure, if we set aside the 1,520 or so miles of Iranian coastline. President Obama waited two weeks to call Benghazi an act of terror? Rep. Steve King at least tried to salvage that one for Mitt Romney by cutting the outrage threshold from two weeks to "almost four minutes". To the one, these are simple fact-checking issues. To the other, it wasn't worth it to Mitt Romney to get such points right.

One of the long-term assumptions about the electoral horserace is that it shows voters a thing or three about how a candidate would operate as president. Does that conventional wisdom still hold, or have we put it on hold for Mitt Romney? And why would we do that? To be "fair"? Handicapping is for golf scores, not elections.

How does this settle with the Republican focus on electoral integrity that has manifested in the form of voter ID laws, voter purges, and even the Ohio Secretary of State flirting with a contempt finding? The Pennsylvania Speaker of the House boasting that voter ID laws will throw the election? And now the Romney campaign is instructing Wisconsin poll watchers to go out and attempt to enforce incorrect information?

In the first place, can we really reconcile these "mistakes" with the idea of electoral integrity without wondering how it is that they all coincide with Republican favor? And, secondly, now that the Romney campaign is officially in, at what point do we get to hold these shenanigans against the Republican ticket?

After all, one of the long-term outcomes of the electoral horserace in terms of the Romney/Ryan ticket is that the Republican campaign just can't manage to do things right, honestly, or with something resembling a clue.

Some on the right grow weary of hearing about Republican dishonesty. Unfortunately, the only ways to help them with that is if Republicans decide to stop lying, or conservative voters mount a significant protest against the dishonesty. Neither has happened so far; neither is likely in the next week.

The Romney campaign in September began pulling up stakes in Wisconsin, with every appearance of conceding defeat in the Badger State. Now we know why: They don't think they can win Wisconsin, so they will try to steal it.
____________________

Notes:

Keyes, Scott. "Romney Campaign Training Poll Watchers To Mislead Voters In Wisconsin". ThinkProgress. October 30, 2012. ThinkProgress.org. October 30, 2012. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/10/30/1106961/romney-wisconsin-poll-watchers/
 
Republican Privilege?

Republican Privilege?

An update on last year's voter reg mess. After all that noise and bluster about vote fraud and protecting the integrity of the system, Republicans can celebrate as another of their own has gotten away with it.

Colin Small, a Pennsylvania man employed by the GOP's voter registration fraud arm, Strategic Allied Consulting, was arrested in Virginia last year after he was seen dumping voter registrations into the trash. At the time, RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said, "He made a mistake and he's being charged with it, which we fully support."

And now we see why they supported that charge.

The young Republican who grabbed national headlines after being arrested for throwing voter registration forms into a dumpster before the 2012 election won't be facing any legal consequences.

A judge in Virginia dropped several misdemeanor charges against Colin Small on Wednesday, meaning the 23-year-old will not face any penalties for discarding a number of voter registration forms. Felony charges were dropped back in April, but Small was still facing five misdemeanor counts until this week.

During a four-hour court hearing on Tuesday, Small's lawyer John C. Holloran argued that Small simply made a mistake and wasn't trying to purposefully prevent anyone from registering to vote. Small, a friend from college and Small's former tennis coach all testified.

(Reilly)​

Because, well, you know, sure, he broke the law, but that doesn't mean he should have to answer for it.

At least, not when he's a Republican in Virginia.

Small's attorney, John C. Holloran, explained the injustice his client faced; for instance, the former Eagle Scout's booking photo wasn't glamorous enough—"They took an awful booking photo of him, he looks almost evil"—and the fact that Small was arrested for committing a crime in the first place has damaged the Small his faith in the justice system. "It's a very difficult education for them," Holloran explained.

Yes, the justice system arrests you when you are caught breaking the law. I didn't think it was that hard to figure out.
____________________

Notes:

Reilly, Ryan J. "Republican Who Tossed Voter Registration Forms Let Off The Hook". The Huffington Post. July 18, 2013. HuffingtonPost.com. July 18, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/colin-small-gop_n_3619396.html
 
I think we need another Martin Luther King. Someone needs take up the voter rights banner.
 
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