This is getting crazy. People do some jacked up things to serve their own interests. http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNe Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash. Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected. The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats. The focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes. The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations. Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats. "We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee. Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law. So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else. The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there. It's going to take a while to sort all of this out, but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure you really are registered.
Sure I think peop;e are plenty capable, just like the alleged voting fiasco in the Kennedy/Nixon election in Cook county in Chicago. Allegedly members of the local unions used the registraion numbers of dead people to vote for Kennedy helping him win by the slimmest of margins. But do I necesarily believe that it happened? No.
They had signed voter registration slips that contained voters that were not on the voter rolls. This is the new Republican get out the vote strategy. It's in every state that's close. The next step the Republicans will take is to accuse the Democrats of doing this and repeat it until the media says both camps are doing it to be "objective".
And we would have gotten away with too if not for those meddling employees of a private voter registration company.
a word from Josh... FASCINATING. EMPLOYEES OF Voters Outreach of America, a GOP-funded voter registration outfit operating in Nevada, say they personally witnessed company employees shredding hundreds or even thousands of Democratic registrations. Now the same company (VOA) is being accused of destroying Democratic registration forms in Oregon. The head of VOA is Nathan Sproul, a Republican political consultant who used to be the executive director of the Arizona state Republican party. Before that, he was the executive director of the Arizona Christian Coalition. In gaining access to venues to register voters, he has apparently been claiming that his group is part of America Votes, a voter education and registration groups put together by a consortium of Democrat-leaning groups like the AFL-CIO, Emily's List, the Sierra Club and others. A quick scan of Nexis shows Sproul's outfit is also operating in West Virginia (see Charleston Gazette, August 20th), where they've already raised some controversy for misleading tactics if not destroying legally valid registrations. -- Josh Marshall
If it is true, won't the people involved be prosecuted by the Election folks? Or are they corrupt too?
If you haven't noticed, Secretaries of State around the country have taken to emulating Katherine Harris' 2000 act in Florida. It's not page one news but it's happening nonetheless.
Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.
I don't really care if this news is true or not. Election is a dirty business the world over and many shady things go on usually unnoticed. Logically speaking, no election can be 100% fair and pure. Both parties anticipate that legal issues could come up during this election and so they have retained or hired tens of attorneys (for months now) on standby to do post election day battle(s).
This would fall under pre-election battles, Fegwu. If the registrations aren't filed, then the voters can't vote. Pretty obvious stuff. God help us, if this is going on in crucial states all over the country. We started this republic stuff... you would think we could do better than this. Keep D&D Civil!!
Why isn't there more uproar over this? Maybe that's a rhetorical question. But, even if these charges are not true, the very suggestion that they could be true should be enough to set off everyone's danger alarm.
OK, it took a day. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6494089 . . . McAuliffe said the Democratic party in Nevada planned to file a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking "relief for voters who were victimized, whose cards were ripped up." He denied that the Democratic party was linked to improper registration activities. "This is an issue because the RNC (Republican party) is involved itself directly in the funding. This is not some outside group. The DNC has never been involved in any activity like this," he said. (Additional reporting by Curt Hopkins in Eugene, Oregon)
All is right in the world. If the accusation has merit, they can seek justice in the courts. Our democracy isn't in mortal peril here.
This is what baffles me. Very serious allegations here! And not really a partisan issue. Shouldn't be up to the Dem's to complain...the Election folks should be jumping on this one (or do y'all really want the UN to have to come and monitor the election process). Not sure if the lack of outrage is just exhaustion from all the wolf crying of late. But it does seem very odd that this hasn't garnered more attention from those responsible for the election.
they are.. http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-sproul14oct14,1,3532412.story GOP Consulting Firm Investigated for Voter Fraud Claims Oregon opens criminal probe into charges that Democratic voter forms were thrown out. By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer Oregon's attorney general opened a criminal investigation Wednesday into allegations that Democratic voter registration forms were destroyed or discarded by a political consulting firm working for the Republican National Committee. The allegations involve a voter registration drive conducted by Sproul & Associates, a Phoenix-based consulting organization that was hired by the RNC earlier this year and is headed up by the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Committee, Nathan Sproul. Sproul has become entangled in controversial allegations in at least three states where his company was conducting registration drives paid for by the RNC. RNC officials acknowledged Wednesday that Sproul was paid to conduct the registrations. But they characterized the controversy as a Democratic "ploy" and charged that supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry had engaged in rampant voter fraud that had gained less attention. Both Democrats and Republicans use paid consultants to register voters, but laws in most states require that they register and submit applications for any individual regardless of party affiliation. In many cases, the consultants do not identify themselves as working for a political party. Sproul & Associates sometimes identified its registration program as Voter Outreach. Allegations about destroyed or dumped registration forms have been lodged in two of Sproul's registration drives, in Nevada and Oregon. A Nevada employee, who claimed he saw Democratic registrations destroyed, was disgruntled and had been fired, Sproul said in a telephone interview. "It is absolutely false," he said. A man identifying himself as a Sproul employee made similar allegations to local news media this week about registrations in Oregon. But Sproul said he did not know him. Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon Atty. Gen. Hardy Myers, a Democrat, said a criminal probe had begun into "allegations that they destroyed or threw away completed voter registration forms." Meanwhile, a manager of the Medford, Ore., public library system said Wednesday she denied Sproul employees access to the city's libraries to register voters after she found misleading statements on a letter last month from the company seeking permission to use the libraries. Meghan O'Flaherty, manager of the Medford library headquarters, said she received a written request to use library facilities last month from Sproul & Associates, which identified itself as a "nonpartisan voter registration drive, America Votes!" O'Flaherty looked into the group and determined that America Votes! was a Democratic organization, but later learned that Sproul & Associates was affiliated with Republicans. An e-mail list of library officials in Oregon turned up other instances of library officials who had been contacted by Sproul & Associates, she said. The requests were denied. Sproul said the letter's use of America Votes! was a "misunderstanding." Another Sproul employee in Charleston, W.Va., told a newspaper there in August that she quit her job after she was told to register only individuals who would confirm they were supporting President Bush. Sproul dismissed her allegations, saying that in his view nothing improper had occurred.
