Romney consultant at center of GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal still working for GOP in 10 states

Article Mirror

October 11, 2012

By Anomaly

Finally. We finally found the voter fraud that we’ve been hearing so much about. The GOP held up a mirror and there it was, and it appears that it’s still in play. Republicans fled from Nathan Sproul’s now infamous name, after it was revealed that his companies are allegedly complicit in voter registration fraud.

As reported here, Sproul was hired by the Romney campaign for a period of five months that began last November and ended in March. But now there’s evidence that the payments continued, only to a different name.

The Brad Blog now reports that late last month, after the scandal broke, $430,000 in payments from the California Republican Party made its way to the ‘Grassroots Outreach, LLC.” That firm shared the same corporate Tempe, AZ address as Sproul’s companies Sproul & Associates and Lincoln Strategy Groups.

Most of the payments in this election cycle, according to the database, are said to be for “Signature Gathering” (presumably for ballot initiatives, etc.), though $34,000 of those payments are noted to be for “Voter Registration”.

Sproul confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that Grassroots Outreach is, indeed, one of his companies, though he insists the CA database is in error, because, he says, his companies have done no voter registration in the state this year.

“Those entries are incorrect,” he told us. “We did not do any voter registration work for the [California Republican Party] in 2012 as indicated. I think its a simple mistake in reporting. I think that should have been for signature gathering as well.”

He also denied doing registration work in Oregon this year, despite evidence we detailed in our recent report showing that registration workers in Portland were seen using the same, deceptive tactics caught on video tape in other parts of the country where Sproul’s workers were seen presenting themselves as pollsters, rather than registration workers, in order to screen for Romney supporters and filter out Democratic-leaning voters, so as to keep them from being able to register to vote at all.

This is like a bad soap opera:

Greg Flynn of the North Carolina blog “BlueNC”, was the one to originally connect the Strategic Allied Consulting firm to Nathan Sproul, after noticing that Sproul & Associates was listed at the owner of Strategic’s Internet domain name. (After his initial report, the company changed the InterNIC record of the domain to “private”, but not before Flynn had screen-captured the evidence.)

Now, Flynn has uncovered new evidence of another company calling itself “Issue Advocacy Partners”. He documents help wanted ads, some posted as recently as September 26th, mirroring those published previously by Strategic Allied Consulting.

“Similar ads were being posted in other states, namely Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, New York and New Jersey, for almost identical jobs with another entity, Issue Advocacy Partners,” writes Flynn. “Some of the listings are connected directly to Sproul’s Lincoln Strategy Group. Others use Sproul’s Tempe, AZ, business address for contact information.” [Update: Since original publication this morning, Flynn writes in to note that Issue Advocacy Partners has also now "popped up" in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana as well. "Also," he adds, "two former supervisors of Sproul's NC operation have moved to OH, one now hiring 'Voter Outreach Representatives'".]

(my bold)

Yes, they are still registering voters — and perhaps, as history shows, destroying Democratic voter registration forms. It’s curious to ponder how many elections have they have manipulated.

“Some of the ads specifically mention voter registration,” Flynn details, while others use “terms like ‘seeking to hire grassroots canvassers to identify conservative voters’, ‘voter recruiter’, ‘conservative voter identification’, ‘voter ID’, ‘identify conservative voters’.”

Evidence gathered by Brad Friedman and Greg Flynn prove that Sproul’s nefarious operation is still working in collaboration with the RNC. (See the screenshots on the Brad Blog)It’s not just Florida. It’s California and Oregon under the name Grassroots Outreach, and in Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, New York and New Jersey under the name Issue Advocacy Partners.

We broke the story of the young woman registering only Romney voters. Since then, it’s been made public that she in fact worked for Sproul’s company — we’re not faulting the young lady, but we have to wonder who trained her for her job.

Image: Crooks & Liars.