RNC cuts ties with firm over voter registration fraud allegations

[Riot]

RNC cuts ties with firm over voter registration allegations

By Michael Isikoff, NBC News

The Republican National Committee has fired a controversial consulting firm it was paying millions of dollars to conduct voter registration in five battleground states, NBC News has learned.

The move came after the Palm Beach County, Fla., elections supervisor discovered 108 potentially fraudulent registration forms submitted by the GOP consulting firm, including suspected phony signatures and home addresses that matched those of a gas station, a medical building, and a Land Rover automotive dealership.

NBC News has learned that four other Florida counties have also reported hundreds of possible fraudulent registration forms submitted by the firm, including apparent dead people being registered as new voters.

Prosecutors in two counties are investigating possible voter fraud by the GOP consulting firm, officials said.

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“It’s kind of ironic that the dead people they accused ACORN of registering are now being done by the RPOF” [Republican Party of Florida], said Lux.

Out of 304 Republican voter-registration forms recently dropped off by a firm employee at a small "satellite office" of the Palm Beach elections office, 106 were flagged as potentially fraudulent -- including "a lot" with "similar looking" signatures and others with apparently phony addresses, Bucher said in an interview.

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The allegations involving voter fraud by the GOP consulting firm is a new twist in the national controversy over the threat posed by voter fraud and the impact of new state laws passed by Republican-controlled legislatures to combat it. While Republican officials have repeatedly accused Democratic groups such as ACORN of fraudulently registering voters in the past, the new dispute over what happened in Palm Beach -- involving the registration of Republican voters -- appears to be one of the first to have led to a criminal inquiry in this year's election.

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Nathan Sproul has been previously accused of suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms and manipulating ballot initiatives. His firms -- formerly Sproul & Associates, Lincoln Strategy and Strategic Allied Consultants -- had previously worked for RNC voter-registration efforts during the campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain. In 2004, Democratic Sens. Leahy and Kennedy sent a letter to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft requesting he "launch an immediate investigation into the activities of Mr. Sproul and his firm." But the request did not lead to any criminal charges against Sproul.

Continued in detail

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