Nathan Sproul

In the face of scares about “voter fraud” lead­ing to restric­tive voter ID laws, a bomb­shell exploded days ago when it was revealed that the com­pany hired by the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee to run voter reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves in vital swing states has been sub­mit­ting fraud­u­lent reg­is­tra­tion forms.

It’s worth look­ing at the back­ground and con­text of what hap­pened, the details of what is hap­pen­ing, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for what might hap­pen. We’ve seen this tale before, but past is not pro­logue. It will turn out dif­fer­ently this time. Per­haps this is what it looks like when a whole national polit­i­cal party shoots itself in its col­lec­tive foot.

Nathan Sproul, a Repub­li­can strate­gist and “vot­ing con­sul­tant”, formed a com­pany this past June, Strate­gic Allied Con­sult­ing, to lead Repub­li­can voter reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves in Florida, Col­orado, Vir­ginia, New Hamp­shire, Nevada, Cal­i­for­nia, and North Car­olina, as well as get-​​out-​​the-​​vote efforts in a num­ber of states includ­ing Ohio, Wis­con­sin and Iowa. Sproul has been a mover and shaker in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. He is a for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ari­zona Repub­li­can Party. He is cur­rently the head of Lin­coln Strat­egy Group, a national polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm based in Ari­zona, and is a for­mer leader of the Ari­zona Chris­t­ian Coali­tion. His web­site brags that his “wide rang­ing exper­tise in both cam­paign man­age­ment and gov­ern­ment rela­tions, helps him man­age clients to suc­cess.” Lin­coln Strate­gies was active in both 2008 and 2010 in reg­is­tra­tion dri­ves. The RNC paid Sproul around $3 mil­lion for a 2012 voter reg­is­tra­tion drive. The Rom­ney cam­paign had Sproul work­ing for them as long ago as last Novem­ber.

Early last week, the story broke that some­one oper­at­ing in Florida and hired by Strate­gic Allied Con­sult­ing, then pre­sented as a lone wolf, had turned in a num­ber of fraud­u­lent voter reg­is­tra­tion forms. Unver­i­fi­able names, sim­i­lar sig­na­tures, and fake addresses aroused sus­pi­cions. At first, the prob­lem seemed con­fined to a sin­gle county, Palm Beach, but it quickly spread to at least eight coun­ties. Even as late as Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 29, “Local and national GOP offi­cials said the prob­lems in Palm Beach County appear to stem from a sin­gle employee.” In Palm Beach alone, “about 100 reg­is­tra­tion forms were affected.” The prob­lems didn’t stop there, however.

Already by Sep­tem­ber 28, the Col­orado Repub­li­can Party ter­mi­nated its con­tract with Strate­gic Allied, because of alle­ga­tions of fraud. There is evi­dence of sim­i­lar fraud in Vir­ginia and Nevada. A video appeared on the inter­net, as early as Sep­tem­ber 21, of a young woman work­ing for Strate­gic Allied, who revealed that she saw her mis­sion as reg­is­ter­ing Repub­li­cans, rather than reg­is­ter­ing vot­ers. It has also come to light that “Sproul has oper­ated other firms that have been accused in the past of impro­pri­eties designed to help Repub­li­can can­di­dates, includ­ing dump­ing reg­is­tra­tion forms filled out by Democ­rats,” though there have, as yet, been no “crim­i­nal charges.” Nor was any of this ter­ri­bly secret:

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.

Strate­gic Allied appar­ently knew of the cur­rent prob­lems in Florida per­haps as early as the mid­dle of August, but did noth­ing. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Strate­gic Allied attempted to mis­lead reporters inves­ti­gat­ing the mat­ter. Whether this rises to the level of a “coverup” is unim­por­tant. The point is, it could have been known and revealed much sooner — or per­haps even pre­vented, sim­ply by hir­ing some­one else.

If much of this story sounds famil­iar, it should. In 2009, fol­low­ing the suc­cess­ful efforts of ACORN (Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­nity Orga­ni­za­tions for Reform Now) to reg­is­ter vot­ers in the 2008 elec­tion, sto­ries broke about fraud­u­lent voter reg­is­tra­tion forms. Inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors work­ing for ACORN were paid accord­ing to the num­ber of reg­is­tra­tion forms they turned in. A num­ber of these con­trac­tors sub­mit­ted forms they had appar­ently filled in them­selves, with false names and fake addresses, in an attempt to defraud ACORN and receive pay­ment for work they had not done. Secretly-​​made videos — selec­tively edited — also cast the orga­ni­za­tion in a bad light. Repub­li­cans com­plained bit­terly, and all fund­ing was with­drawn from the group. The even­tual out­come:

Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the videos and with­drawal of fund­ing, four dif­fer­ent inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions by var­i­ous state and city Attor­neys Gen­eral and the GAO released in 2009 and 2010 cleared ACORN, find­ing its employ­ees had not engaged in crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and that the orga­ni­za­tion had man­aged its fed­eral fund­ing appro­pri­ately, and call­ing the videos decep­tively and selec­tively edited to present the work­ers in the worst pos­si­ble light. Despite this, by March 2010, 15 of ACORN’s 30 state chap­ters had already closed and the group announced it was clos­ing its remain­ing state chap­ters and disbanding.

ACORN was killed before it could reg­is­ter vot­ers for the 2010 midterms. It is worth not­ing that even had all the charges been true, the actions of ACORN would not have adversely affected any elec­tion. ACORN itself had iden­ti­fied the fraud­u­lent reg­is­tra­tion forms, and these false names were not actu­ally reg­is­tered in any state. Since none of the peo­ple actu­ally existed (“Mickey Mouse,” for instance), none of them would have voted even if some of the forms had slipped through.

Nev­er­the­less, build­ing on the accu­sa­tions of “voter fraud”, Repub­li­cans have pushed through increas­ingly restric­tive vot­ing laws all over the coun­try:

At least 180 restric­tive bills intro­duced since the begin­ning of 2011 in 41 states … 27 restric­tive bills cur­rently pend­ing in 6 states … 25 laws and 2 exec­u­tive actions passed since the begin­ning of 2011 in 19 states … 16 states have passed restric­tive vot­ing laws and exec­u­tive actions that have the poten­tial to impact the 2012 elec­tion… These states account for 198 elec­toral votes, or 73 per­cent of the total needed to win the pres­i­dency… Of these, restric­tions from 18 laws and exec­u­tive actions are cur­rently in effect in 13 states…

This is the legacy of the faux panic over ACORN. And now, we have the Repub­li­can ACORN, in the form of Strate­gic Allied Consulting.

As I pointed out, the actual effect of the ACORN false reg­is­tra­tions would have been non-​​existent. Quite likely, the fraud­u­lent Strate­gic Allied reg­is­tra­tions will also amount to noth­ing, although if legit­i­mate reg­is­tra­tions for Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ers were destroyed, that could mat­ter. More impor­tant would be a self-​​inflicted wound. With the dis­cov­ery of wide­spread fraud, the RNC has been forced to with­draw fund­ing for Strate­gic Allied, for both its voter reg­is­tra­tion drive, and for its GOTV activ­i­ties. As most of these con­tracts were in impor­tant swing states, this could con­ceiv­ably affect the num­ber of Repub­li­can votes in the places they could mat­ter the most.

And here is where the big dif­fer­ence lies, in com­par­ing ACORN to Strate­gic Allied. The prob­lems with ACORN cen­tered around indi­vid­u­als who scammed money from ACORN. There was, accord­ing to all the inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions, no intent on the part of ACORN to defraud any­one. And as soon as ACORN dis­cov­ered what was going on, they reported it.

In con­trast, Strate­gic Allied appar­ently tried to con­ceal the fraud for as long as it could. Yet the past actions of Nathan Sproul and the com­pa­nies he cre­ated had exhib­ited these ten­den­cies for years, and these pat­terns had been revealed long ago. The RNC hired him any­way. The recent shock­ing rev­e­la­tions should have shocked no one, and should not have come as rev­e­la­tions. If the fall­out from this scan­dal hurts the Repub­li­can Party or its can­di­dates, it’s a case of know­ingly hav­ing shot them­selves in the foot.

Does the RNC have time to hire some­one else to com­plete its voter reg­is­tra­tion and GOTV efforts in these vital swing states? Prob­a­bly. How well can a last-​​minute oper­a­tion be expected to per­form? Or can the RNC man­age to re-​​hire basi­cally the same orga­ni­za­tion, re-​​formed under a dif­fer­ent name?

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