Is there anyone left in Washington, DC who cares about a return to pen and paper ballots?

[seafan]

We have been watching this crowd of vicious right wingers going after our right to vote for more than a decade now. No one has done a damn thing to stop them, 12 years out from the debacle of November 2000.

No matter how loudly we've been screaming.


The latest big news from Florida is the discovery of fraudulent voter registrations submitted by a notorious firm that was deliberately hired by the RNC and the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), while, at the same time, the GOP screams about widespread (virtually nonexistent) voter fraud by "the other side".


How much clearer does the game plan of the true enemies of our democracy need to be?




Nathan Sproul’s firms were accused of voter registration shenanigans in 2004.
(via Tampa Bay Times)


Just the kind of corrupt contractor the RNC, Republican Party of Florida and Mitt Romney love to have on the payroll. Repeatedly.


Romney Quietly Hires Consulting Firm With Sordid History Of Destroying Democratic Voter Registration Forms (from late 2011)
(Nathan Sproul’s firms)


Republican-paid voter registration operation linked to fraud, August 31, 2012
(Nathan Sproul’s firms)


Funny, this was going on in October of 2004 as well, with Nathan Sproul’s firms:

Investigation into Trashed Voter Registrations

And, as usual, DU was on it.



Now, back to the present.


“Questionable” Palm Beach County voter registration forms forwarded to state attorney for review, September 25, 2012

The Republican Party of Florida is dumping a firm it paid more than $1.3 million to register new voters, after Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher flagged 106 “questionable” registration applications turned in by the contractor this month.

Bucher asked the state attorney’s office to review the applications “in an abundance of caution” because she said her staff had questions about similar-looking signatures, missing information and wrong addresses on the forms.

The state GOP hired Strategic Allied Consultants of Glen Allen, Va., for “voter registration services” and get-out-the-vote activities. The firm got identical payments of $667,598 in July and August.

“When we learned today about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida,” said RPOF Executive Director Mike Grissom late Tuesday.

.....

Yeah, right, Mr. Grissom. These people never tire of lying.



FL GOP FIRES ROMNEY CONSULTANT'S VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM AFTER FRAUDULENT FORMS REPORTED IN PALM BEACH COUNTY, September 26, 2012


Firm fired (by Republican Party of Florida) over Palm Beach voter registrations had issues in other counties, states, September 29, 2012

(Yeah, finally "fired" after orchestrating nearly a year of Republican registration fraud shenanigans.... while the League of Women voters lost the entire year of 2011 to voter registration drives in Florida because of draconian new laws pushed in by the GOP-dominated Florida state Legislature... interesting how this works, no?)



Two "breakdowns" this week in Florida's statewide voter database, September 19, 2012 (Just priming up the machines, you see.)


Firm hired by Florida GOP knew weeks ago of possibly fraudulent voter registrations, October 3, 2012

TALLAHASSEE — 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.

.....

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.

FDLE launches criminal investigation into voter registration forms by GOP vendor, October 4, 2012

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced Wednesday that it is launching a criminal investigation into voter registration forms filed by a GOP vendor, Strategic Allied Consulting.

The FDLE spent Monday and Tuesday reviewing forms filed by the Republican Party of Florida that were deemed suspicious by elections supervisors to determine if there was evidence of illegal activity.

"Following the review, there was criminal predicate," said FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger. "There was a possibility that crimes were committed."

.....

"It is past time for (Republican Party of Florida chairman) Lenny Curry and the Republican Party of Florida to come clean about their involvement in this escalating scandal," Florida Democratic Party executive director Scott Arceneaux said in a statement. "With almost 30 days until Election Day … Florida voters, election administrators and law enforcement officials need to know the facts. The Florida GOP owes the people of this state a clear explanation. If they refuse to come clean it is incumbent on the Division of Elections to investigate the RPOF."

.....

It just never ends.



In Florida, Echoes of 2000 as Vote Questions Emerge , November 10, 2006

SARASOTA, Fla., Nov. 9 — A Democrat who narrowly lost the Congressional race here is seeking a recount after dozens of people reported problems using Sarasota County’s touch-screen voting machines and a significant number of ballots had no recorded votes in the high-profile race.

The Democrat, Christine Jennings, lost to her Republican opponent, Vern Buchanan, by just 373 votes out of a total 237,861 cast — one of the closest House races in the nation. More than 18,000 voters in Sarasota County, or 13 percent of those who went to the polls Tuesday, did not seem to vote in the Congressional race when they cast ballots, a discrepancy that Kathy Dent, the county elections supervisor, said she could not explain.

In comparison, only 2 percent of voters in one neighboring county within the same House district and 5 percent in another skipped the Congressional race, according to The Herald-Tribune of Sarasota. And many of those who did not seem to cast a vote in the House race did vote in more obscure races, like for the hospital board.

More than 100 voters have told the Jennings campaign that their votes for her did not show up on the summary screen at the end of the touch-screen voting process, and that they had to re-enter them. The candidate’s lawyers said they feared that not everyone had noticed the problem or realized that they could re-enter the vote.

“There is a spontaneous combustion of outcry in this county,” said Kendall Coffey, a lawyer who was on Vice President Al Gore’s legal team in the 2000 presidential recount and is now working for Ms. Jennings. “We are determined to do everything we can to make sure that every vote counts and everything we can to get to the bottom of this.”

.....

Tampa real estate developer with ties to Vern Buchanan pleads guilty to illegal contributions, September 27, 2012

A Tampa real estate developer and an accountant with ties to U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan pleaded guilty in federal court today for their roles in illegal contributions to the Republican Party of Florida and Buchanan's campaign, the Department of Justice announced.

.....

Vern Buchanan financial disclosures include $100k discrepancy, September 25, 2012

Rep. Vern Buchanan's former company violated law, Federal Election Commission says, May 31, 2011


Friend of U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan pleads guilty to campaign violations, September 28, 2012

In a stunning development just weeks before the November election, one of U.S. Rep Vern Buchanan's longtime friends and another man pleaded guilty Thursday to making illegal campaign contributions.

Tampa developer Tim Mobley and accountant Timothy Hohl admitted breaking federal law by reimbursing employees for $84,300 in contributions to an official described in a Justice Department press release only as "an elected member of the U.S. Congress.''

That official is Buchanan, whose office quickly issued a statement saying the Sarasota Republican was "totally unaware'' of any unlawful contributions and would "disgorge'' them, almost certainly to the U.S. Treasury.

Buchanan's campaigns have long been plagued by allegations of fundraising irregularities, but this is the first time anyone has been criminally prosecuted.

.....

And Mr. Buchanan is gunning to stay in the U. S. Legislature. He is but one example on a long list of Florida political corruption, of what we, as a nation, end up with, when no one stands up for the sanctity of the people's vote.



One more thing.


Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states, October 4, 2012

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

Dan Merkle, director of elections for ABC News, and a member of the consortium that runs the exit poll, confirmed the shift Wednesday. The aim, he said, “is to still deliver a quality product in the most important states,” in the face of mounting survey costs.

The decision by the National Election Pool — a joint venture of the major television networks and The Associated Press — is sure to cause some pain to election watchers across the country. (For a full list of the states that won’t have exit polls scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come.

.....

Here is a list of the states that will be excluded from coverage: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Now, why might exit polling in heavily Hispanic states such as Texas, for example, be curtailed? Hhmmmmmmmmm. Maybe the current 71%-21% advantage by Obama in the Latino polling has something to do with it.


This story about killing exit polls in "selected states" also troubles me, because it reminds me of another time. 2004.

I remember how, in Election (theft) 2004, Republicans went to great lengths to shave Democratic votes from areas that vote heavily Democratic (as it would raise no suspicion when Dems ended up winning these areas). The GOP also shaved Democratic votes from areas heavily Republican (So no one would miss these Dem votes anyway, as the GOP was expected to win in these areas). The aim of this was to steal large numbers of Democratic votes, whenever and wherever it would not be noticed.




I will NEVER forget this:

(Karl) Rove, who is under investigation in the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, thrilled the partisan audience with behind-the-scenes anecdotes in the West Wing or on Air Force One. He recalled his sophisticated computer program to track returns on election night 2004 that contradicted exit polls showing Bush losing in Florida.

“I’ll never forget. The first county I clicked was Hernando. Then Pasco. And about that time, Jeb called in,” Rove recalled. “I started working my way down the east coast and he said, 'Start with Broward.’ … It was clear, we were running well ahead of where we needed to run, and Jeb said, 'We’re going to win, and we’re going to win big.’”

-----June 2, 2006

The outright vote stealing by these traitors is an obscenity. They want to control it all. For all time.


These people absolutely MUST be stopped.



It there anyone left in Washington who:

1. cares
2. is in a position to get this done, and
3. has a spine?



After observing the trend over the past miserable decade, the prognosis looks bleak.

[Enthusiast]

1. After the 2006 election I was shocked

when congressional Democrats didn't make election reform their very top priority. All I could think was WTF? Same thing after 2008. I thought, "Where are their priorities?" Now in 2012 we face the same dirty election tactics as in 2,000. Obviously we need federal laws with teeth to prevent these abuses.

[No Elephants]

3. Why do you suppose the Democrats did nothing

between January 2007 and January 2011?

All kinds of news stories were out there about two consecutive stolen Presidential elections in 2000 and 2004. Our media doesn't exactly dig up stories. The Republicans sure didn't leak them. So, my guess is that the stories came from Democrats. Yet all they did was hold hearings that proved that voting machines could easily be rigged.

Why nothing further.?

Please see Reply # 1 on this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2487664

including the older thread linked in Reply #1. Here is that link again.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5069275

Please see esp. Reply # 80 by Bradblog on the older thread.

Bradblog and his staff devote so much time to election fraud.

When it comes to rigged elections, I take Bradblog at his word.

[Enthusiast]

4. I guess I missed the more recent thread.

So much for honest elections.

[No Elephants]

2. Boston went to paper ballots for the 2004 election, maybe even 2002, I am not sure.

You are a lot likelier to have success with your local government than with Washington.

That is not to say that Democrats in D.C. have not been remiss. They have been. Please see my reply to Enthusiast.