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Latest Featured Reports | Sunday, November 3, 2024
The GOP 'Voter Fraud'
Before the Storm:
'BradCast' 10/31/24
A primer on what election fraud actually is (and isn't), and how Team Trump is sowing seeds to steal the election if he loses again this year...
'Green News Report' 10/31/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
From extreme drought to deadly flash flooding in Spain; Worldwide toll on health from climate change is rising; PLUS: Environmental proponents hold breath for U.S. election...
Previous GNRs: 10/29/24 - 10/24/24 - Archives...
'Closing Arguments'
with Digby and Driftglass: 'BradCast' 10/30/24
Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast'...
Trump Promises to be a Lawless, Authoritarian President. Believe Him: 'BradCast' 10/29/24
Also: Bezos, Musk, and the menacing threat of America's ascendant billionaire oligarchy...
'Green News Report' 10/29/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Climate and U.S. economy on the ballot; World on pace for dangerous warming, U.N. warns; PLUS: Biden cracks down on lead paint and its serious threat to America's children...
Previous GNRs: 10/24/24 - 10/22/24 - Archives...
Election Heats Up: Ballots Burn, Billionaires 'Obey in Advance', Callers Ring In: 'BradCast' 10/28/24
Also: Philly D.A. sues Musk over million dollar 'lottery'; Much more...
Musk's Privatized Internet Satellite System Threatens U.S. National Security
Why the FAA should revoke the billionaire's license to own and operate Starlink, and federal law must be amended to nationalize it...
Sunday 'VOTE NOW!' Toons
THIS WEEK: Halloween Horrors ... Billionaire Endorsements ... 'The Best People' ... And more! In our latest collection of the week's most important toons...
Harris on Hope, Trump's Fasc-ism in Bumpy Closing Days: 'BradCast' 10/24/24
Also: GOP political terrorism in AZ; Kelly's '9-1-1 call to America'; Trump withheld FEMA disaster aid to WA, CA, GA, UT and MD...
'Green News Report' 10/24/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Record heat, drought, wildfires in Northeast; Climate future depends on Senate majority; PLUS: Biden Administration racing election clock with climate and infrastructure funding...
Previous GNRs: 10/22/24 - 10/17/24 - Archives...
Kelly on Trump: 'Fascist', Admires Hitler, Disrespects Constitution and Disabled Vets: 'BradCast' 10/23/24
Also: Chris Melody Fields Figueredo on more than 150 referendums before voters this year...
Accountability Comes For Rudy, Other Election Deniers: 'BradCast' 10/22/24
Also: Trump flip-flops on NC voting rules; GOP vote supp-ression group targets 'Hispanic-sounding' names...
'Green News Report' 10/22/24
Double whammy in Cuba; Historic rains in NM, France, Bangladesh; Largest, longest ever coral bleaching event; PLUS: Oil lobby preps to overturn Biden climate rules...
Elon Musk's 'Vote Buying' and Lying for Trump: 'BradCast' 10/21/24
Guest: Eddie Perez, former Twitter official and longtime election and voting system expert...
Sunday 'High Anxiety' Toons
THIS WEEK: Neck and Neck ... Foxy Lady ... Enemies Within ... Song and Dance ... And much more! In our latest collection of the week's most nerve-racking toons...
'Green News Report' 10/17/24
Climate change-fueled storms raising insurance prices nationwide; SBA fund runs dry after back-to-back storms; PLUS: SCOTUS allows EPA limits on power plants...
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
(All times listed as PACIFIC TIME unless noted)
Media Appearance Archives...
'Special Coverage' Archives
GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Who will sue the federal criminal next?...
UPDATE: Original false stories still posted, uncorrected, on Breitbart 'News' site...
By Brad Friedman on 3/8/2013 5:35am PT  

Former San Diego ACORN worker, Juan Carlos Vera will receive $100,000 in a settlement from federal criminal and professional liar James O'Keefe, after being secretly video-taped in violation of California law by the Rightwing propagandist. The tape was just one in a series of similar videos, all deceptively edited as part of his 2009 ACORN "pimp" hoax series.

The story of the settlement to Vera's July 2010 civil lawsuit was originally broken by Wonkette, which published the 3-page settlement document [PDF], yesterday.

Several different official investigations, including those by the former MA Attorney General [PDF], by the Kings County, NY District Attorney, and by the CA Attorney General all determined that there were no violations of law performed by any ACORN worker seen in the several surreptitiously taped videos. The officials found the tapes were "highly" and "deceptively" edited.

The ACORN "pimp" hoax videos were published originally by the late Republican con-man Andrew Breitbart who, before he died of heart failure just over one year ago, was likely to have been pulled in to the civil case as well, after O'Keefe disclosed in his deposition that Breitbart had advance knowledge of the scheme to secretly video tape workers in violation of CA's Invasion of Privacy Act.

After Breitbart's publication, the edited tapes were widely covered, without fact-checking, in both the Rightwing media such as Fox "News" and non-Rightwing media such as the New York Times. The Times was eventually forced to issue partial-corrections for their inaccurate reporting after a six month effort by The BRAD BLOG to point out how they'd been duped by O'Keefe, who had lied about appearing as a 70s era blaxploitation "pimp" in the offices of ACORN.

A 2010 investigation by the CA Attorney General determined there was "no criminality" by ACORN workers seen in any of the raw video tapes. O'Keefe and his partner Hannah Giles agreed to turn over the unedited tapes in exchange for immunity from criminal prosecution in the state. "The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," California's then AG Jerry Brown said in a statement accompanying the release of his office's investigation which "involved attorneys from all three legal divisions – Criminal Law, Public Rights, and Civil Law – as well as Special Agents from the Department’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence."

"Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor," he added.

While the deal left the AG's office unable to prosecute the duo, the criminal investigation found that O'Keefe and Giles likely violated the civil provisions of CA's Privacy Act and could be sued under those provisions "for recording a confidential conversation without consent." Vera, who, after his odd meeting with O'Keefe and Giles had the wherewithal to contact the police, sued both of them in July of 2010 for violations of the act...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By Brad Friedman on 2/1/2013 3:07pm PT  

You'll be shocked --- shocked --- to learn (once again) that rightwing political propagandist and operative James O'Keefe, a federal criminal, is also a professional liar.

From O'Keefe's Project Veritas Investigates: Voter Fraud" racket on January 11, 2012...

That was the lie. Here's the truth. From TPM's report on the dropped criminal investigation of a Congressman's son today:

Police in Arlington County, Va. have dropped an investigation into Patrick Moran, the son of Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), stemming from an election-season "voter fraud" hidden-camera video released by conservative activist James O'Keefe.

Police told a local Patch reporter that both Morans had cooperated with the investigation, but that O'Keefe had not complied with several requests for the full, unedited video in his possession, along with the identity of the videographer.
...
"We want the full version. That's our job, to do a thorough investigation. And that's a huge piece of the process right there," [police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck told Patch.]

Of course, we've highlighted O'Keefe's lies about releasing full, unedited videos, from which he creates his doctored and deceptively edited video propaganda, many times.

For example, despite his fundraising pleas to the contrary, it took a deal for criminal immunity from the California Attorney General in 2010 before O'Keefe finally agreed to turn over the raw, unedited videos from his phony 2009 ACORN "Pimp" Hoax to law enforcement. (The AG's investigation determined that the only violations of criminal law seen on the tapes were O'Keefe's.)

The screenshot from his dishonest fundraising plea at the top of this article was published after he and his co-conspirators trumped up secretly video taped "voter fraud" incidents during last year's New Hampshire Primary.

As we reported in great detail at the time, even while attempting to raise money on his fake "voter fraud investigation" --- which led to the Republican Mayor of Manchester calling for O'Keefe and his gang to be "arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" --- O'Keefe lied about the release of what he claimed were the full, unedited tapes from that particular scam. They weren't. James O'Keefe had lied then, just as he did about the ACORN tapes, just as he has done, according to law enforcement, in the Virginia case.

James O'Keefe is a professional liar. That's how he makes a living. Alert the media.

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BONUS VIDEO: Stewart on Republican failure to ratify U.N. treaty based on U.S. law...
By Brad Friedman on 12/6/2012 11:06am PT  

So, yeah, this is pretty much what it's all come to these days in the Republican Party. Imaginary "voter fraud" and imaginary U.N. tyranny...

BONUS: The Daily Show also had his own take on the Republican dysfunction in the U.S. Senate (discussed by Colbert above) which led to the embarrassing failure to ratify the U.N. treaty for worldwide accommodations for the disabled. The treaty was based on our own, very successful federal bill, the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush twenty years ago.

Part 1 of Jon Stewart's two-parter below is worth watching for the killer John Kerry joke alone...

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(Never mind they don't even exist anymore! They stole it anyway!)
UPDATE: Even Glenn Beck's 'news' site calling out Repubs for ACORN fantasies...
By Brad Friedman on 12/4/2012 4:59pm PT  

It was bad enough when a majority of Republicans were so disinformed after the 2008 election that they thought ACORN stole the election (almost 10 million votes, apparently) for Barack Obama.

Now that ACORN is no more (since early 2010), the massive disinformation campaign that Republicans have been suckered into believing seems to continue nonetheless. Just under a majority of self-identified GOP voters think the non-existent ACORN stole the election again this year for Obama! Those tricky non-existent bastards, apparently, somehow stuffed the ballot box 5.5 million times and never got caught even once!

From Public Policy Polling today, who note that Republicans are "not handling election results well"...

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

It should be noted, for any of those duped Republicans who may be reading this, that there is no evidence, none, zero, nada, that any vote has ever been stolen in any election either by ACORN or via one of the bad voter registrations submitted by one of its workers (bad registrations which were almost all discovered by ACORN themselves and turned in, along with the rogue worker who submitted them, to authorities.)

For those stooges who are still unconvinced, because they read something somewhere on the Internet about "voter fraud" in 2012, we dispatched with the most popular "massive voter fraud" myths of 2012 over the weekend right here.

Finally, as if all of that isn't pathetic enough, PPP has more sad news for a party which now seems intent on disappearing itself entirely...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Refuses to disclose identity of those he alleges 'committed fraud', lots of it, at brother-in-law's residential care facility...
By Brad Friedman on 11/30/2012 6:35am PT  

There's a reason why most Republican wingnuts don't venture outside of the safe confines of Fox "News" or other venues where they won't have to face actual, reality-based information and questions from outside of their comfortable, fact-free bubble.

My conversation on air Thursday with RW "voter fraud" fraudster, commie-hunter, and fact-challenged Fox fave David Horowitz illustrated that point with crystal clarity once again. The result wasn't pretty. At least for him.

When asked for actual facts to back up his extraordinary claims about "Democratic voter fraud" --- specifically, that caretakers at his brother-in-law's residential care facility "committed fraud" by helping the brother-in-law, and purportedly sixty others at the home, to vote --- Horowitz had nothing.

He was, however, able to call me a "communist wanna be", a "liar" and an "extreme partisan" for having displayed the temerity to ask him for such facts. He was even able to pile on top of all of that by claiming (falsely) that I'd called him all sorts of names and even that I had accused him of committing fraud!

That's why these guys don't leave the Fox Fantasy World bubble.

As I say, it wasn't pretty. But the audio of yesterday's radio "interview", and the background on what happened, all follows below. I think you may enjoy it...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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The year of rampant GOP election and voter fraud continues...
By Brad Friedman on 11/9/2012 2:16pm PT  

Last Saturday, we told you about a rare case of polling place voter fraud, when a Republican voter attempted to vote twice in Nevada during Early Voting in the state. Appropriately enough, she was quickly arrested and taking into custody by the FBI. Nevada's system of preventing double-voting at the polls worked well and efficiently, it seems, despite the woman's deluded, disinformed, Fox "News"-fueled belief to the contrary.

Now, however, 56-year old Roxanne Rubin, the woman who was arrested when she showed up for work at the Riviera hotel-casino last Friday for her attempted voter fraud, is reportedly claiming that she was just "testing" the system.

And she's not the only one. On Election Day, another Republican, this one a party-trained poll watcher, was detained in New Mexico after claiming to have been "testing" the system by obtaining a second ballot.

Ironically, after years of false allegations of "Democratic voter fraud" by the GOP and their minions, it has been Republicans this year who have been found defrauding the system in state after state, in case after case. They are failing their own "test"...

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By Brad Friedman on 10/8/2012 4:44pm PT  

Fox "News" has finally decided to cover the widening GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal. Sort of. Barely. And they've decided to include me in their coverage.

It took more than a week, and it was becoming embarrassing that they hadn't said a word about the national scandal rocking the Republican National Committee, so they had to say something because, ya know, "Fair and Balanced" and all.

I was interviewed by their "voter fraud" correspondent Eric Shawn late last week for use on Thursday night's Special Report with Bret Baier. He ended up running lengthier excerpts from the interview the following day on of their afternoon shows.

The video of both packages are posted in full below.

It's been rather amusing watching the Rightwing's pretend "news" sites twist and turn to find new ways to not cover the growing registration fraud scandal which has now resulted in a criminal investigation being launched by the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement, as well as by prosecutors in the state of Colorado...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Potentially fraudulent forms in 11 FL counties; Concerns emerge in other states; RNC scrambles to contain damage
Latest developments in rapidly expanding story...
By Brad Friedman on 9/30/2012 6:35am PT  

A major element of the Republican National Committee's overall attempt to game the 2012 elections by trying to affect who gets to vote and who does not, has just been stopped dead in its tracks.

Along with it, a criminal election fraud complaint has now reportedly been filed with law enforcement in the state of Florida against a Republican firm, owned by a paid Mitt Romney consultant, which was hired by the GOP to carry out partisan voter registration operations in at least five battleground states.

Millions of dollars were spent on the aborted effort by the GOP over the last two months --- their largest single expenditure in several of the states where the scheme was in full tilt --- to seek out Romney supporters only, and sign them up to vote.

The strategy resulted in (or included) fraudulent registration forms collected by the firm and then submitted in Florida by the state GOP with voter addresses, signatures and party affiliations changed. Election officials in the state have told The BRAD BLOG that they fear the scheme could result in the disenfranchisement of a still-unknown number of otherwise legal voters, and they are taking extraordinary measures to try and contain the potential damage as they attempt to work through more than 45,000 new and updated registrations submitted by the GOP and verify their legitimacy.

The fraudulent voter registration forms have so far been discovered in "at least 11" FL counties at this hour, all submitted by the state Republican Party and collected by the RNC's top voter registration firm, a shell company formed in June called Strategic Allied Consulting, as owned by a notorious GOP operative named Nathan Sproul.

On Thursday night, the RNC finally fired the firm which they'd paid more than $3 million dollars over the past two months alone, for voter registration work in at least five key battleground states, and "Get Out the Vote" efforts in at least two more.

But, despite the efforts by the RNC and Strategic Allied Consulting, run secretly by Romney's paid political consultant, the 2012 GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, which The BRAD BLOG initially reported late last Tuesday night as it began to break, is not over yet. Not by a long shot...

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PLUS: A few late updates in the scandal as of now...
By Brad Friedman on 9/28/2012 1:23pm PT  

Last night, as news was just breaking that the Republican National Committee was firing their national voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting (owned by Mitt Romney's paid political consultant, and longtime GOP operative, Nathan Sproul), to whom they had paid at least $3 million over the last two months, I appeared on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture TV show.

The original appearance was set to discuss the FL GOP firing the firm on Tuesday after more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration applications --- with addresses and party affiliations changed, as well as other defects --- were discovered in Palm Beach County, FL. But by air time, the NC GOP had also fired the group, and then the RNC jumped in to do same late yesterday after their firm was reportedly discovered to have been registering dead people as new voters in another FL county.

If you've had trouble keeping up with this fast moving story, this 5-minute clip of my appearance on Hartmann's TV show last night should bring you generally up to speed with what's going on...

Since that appearance, FL officials are now confirming "suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms" in "at least ten counties" in the state, which shatters the "one bad apple", "just one individual in Palm Beach" talking point which the AP had been helping both the RNC and Sproul's shell company, Strategic Allied Consulting, pass on to the public late last night.

There will be more on this, as the story continues to be both developing and fast moving. I'm working on pulling together several threads all at once over here, as there is evidence that this scandal is larger than just the five key battleground states (FL, NC, VA, NV, CO) acknowledged by the RNC, so far, where Sproul's firm was working. So your patience is appreciated as I work to make sense of what's really going on here.

One last note for now: Please notice that neither Brietbart's website, nor Fox "News", both of whom had pretended to be so concerned about "voter fraud" by ACORN in previous years (when they committed no such thing), has yet to say word one about any of this, as Eric Boehlert notes at Media Matters. And at Salon, Alex Seitz-Wald reports that "a search on Strategic Allied Consulting or Nathan Sproul turns up zero results on the Weekly Standard, the National Review, RedState, the Breitbart sites, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air and other" Rightwing sites that went wall-to-wall about ACORN in the past. That, even though, in this case, unlike with the ACORN nonsense, there is actual evidence of real voter registration fraud by the RNC (ACORN was never backed by the DNC) which could, as the Palm Beach County, FL Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher pointed out to me during my Wednesday interview with her on this, end up disenfranchising an unknown number of otherwise legal voters in Florida, as well as other states where this crew has been at work.

Stay tuned...

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BREAKING UPDATE: RNC FIRES FIRM - PAID $3M IN 2 MONTHS - AFTER DEAD PEOPLE FOUND REGISTERED AS NEW VOTERS IN FL
LATER UPDATE: Officials confirm 'possibly fraudulent' forms from RNC in 10 FL counties...
By Brad Friedman on 9/27/2012 3:33pm PT  

[See BREAKING UPDATE at bottom of story. NBC News now reports the RNC has also cut ties with Strategic Allied Consulting.]

The North Carolina Republican Party has fired the shady voter registration firm owned by Mitt Romney's paid political consultant and longtime GOP operative, Nathan Sproul. The firing came as Democrats in the state were on the brink of denouncing the Republicans' tie to the operative's firm.

The state GOP joins the Republican Party of Florida, which also fired Sproul's company (who accounted for the party's largest 2012 expenditure, some $1.3 million over the last two months) after more than 100 apparently fraudulent voter registration forms were turned over to the FL State Attorney in Palm Beach County on Monday for investigation. The BRAD BLOG first reported the emerging story in detail on Tuesday.

The firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, is the latest creation of Sproul, a longtime, high-level GOP operative whose companies --- including Sproul & Associates and Lincoln Strategy Group --- have been accused of destroying Democratic voter registration forms and changing information on them in election after election, in state after state, year after year. He was hired for similar operations by Bush/Cheney in '04, by McCain/Palin in '08 and by Mitt Romney's campaign late last year.

When the FL GOP fired Strategic Allied on Tuesday night, they noted that the firm had been hired "at the request of" the Republican National Committee. On Wednesday, during our exclusive interview with the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election Susan Bucher, she described some of the "similarities in the signatures and certain characteristics in the applications that were very disturbing" on registration applications collected by Sproul's firm and turned in to her office. Among the "disturbing" defects on the forms, addresses of existing registered voters changed "to commercial buildings or addresses" and, "in some places, they were changing political parties."

Bucher stressed her concern that voters were likely to be disenfranchised by the effort when showing up at the polls on Election Day, only to find their address has been changed, removed or moved to another precinct entirely.

The firm is still said to be operating in key battleground states like Virginia, Nevada and Colorado, where a young lady who may have been working for the contractor was caught on a disturbing viral video tape published over the weekend. The young lady, who was hired by "a third-party contractor" retained by the Colorado State Republican Party, as their Communications Director confirmed to The BRAD BLOG on Wednesday, is seen on the tape asking a potential registrant whether she would vote for Obama or Romney before she would allow her to fill out a voter registration form.

When Gregg Flynn of BlueNC reported on Sproul's Strategic Allied Consulting in his state late last month, he reported the NC GOP had paid some $333,000 to the firm in July alone. He also discovered the company had taken steps to hide its ownership by Sproul's firm, Sproul & Associates, shortly after first publication of his initial exposé...

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Top state officials claiming voter purge needed to deter fraud, seemingly disinterested in actual fraud by Romney-tied firm
Susan Bucher offers exclusive new details on disturbing GOP election scheme...
By Brad Friedman on 9/27/2012 5:35am PT  

Given the rampage that state officials in Florida have been on over the past year to purge voter rolls of illegal, supposedly "non-citizen" voter registrations in the state, and the draconian restrictions they've attempted to place on third-party voter registration workers and organizations, in a supposed attempt to curb voter registration fraud, you'd think they'd be all over this week's revelations of at least 100 apparently fraudulent registration forms turned in by a third-party voter registration organization in Palm Beach County.

If you think that, however, you'd be wrong. At least that's the indication that Palm Beach County Supervisor of Election Susan Bucher gave me on Wednesday when I interviewed her on KPFK/Pacifica Radio's BradCast concerning the fraudulent registration applications turned in to her office by a firm hired by the Florida state GOP at the request of the Republican National Committee. [My full interview is posted at the end of this article.]

"I haven't heard from anybody --- the Assistant Secretary [of State] or the Secretary [of State] --- and, ya know, we've had a couple of days and I know they have other things on their plate, but I would think this would be a front-burner issue as well," she told me.

Bucher had informed the office of Ken Detzner, Republican Gov. Rick Scott's hand-picked Secretary of State, about the fraudulent registration forms --- featuring "similarities in the signatures and certain characteristics in the applications that were very disturbing," as she described them to me --- on Monday morning "in an effort to inform them prior to my meeting with the State Attorney."

"I called on Monday morning and left both my office and my cell phone and I've yet to hear from that office," she said during our Wednesday, 6pm ET interview a full three days later.

She explained that there is no longer anyone heading up the State Division of Elections. "We're not real clear [why], but they're not there anymore," she said. "They left right before the Primary election and that position has remained open. But the contact person that we were supposed to have is the Assistant Secretary [of State]. I left him a message on Monday morning and the phone call was never returned. I haven't heard from them yet."

Bucher noted, however, that the state has just given her office 14 more names of "suspected non-citizen" voters that she is supposed to contact with a letter telling them that they must prove their citizenship within 30 days or be removed from the rolls 30 days later.

As The BRAD BLOG covered in great detail earlier this year, Scott and Detzner's initial purported attempt to purge the rolls of thousands of "suspected non-citizens" resulted in no more than 9 who we were able to verify, out of some 11.4 million registered voters in the Sunshine State. None of those 9, we also discovered during our investigation, had actually ever cast a ballot.

"It does not appear that we're going to be able to get to this [new] list and do anything with these voters until after the November 6th election based on the days that we have left," she explained. And yet, the state Republican officials seemed to show little concern about more than 100 cases of demonstrably fraudulent registration forms turned into her office.

Perhaps that's because they were turned in by Strategic Allied Consulting, the shady firm hired by the Republican Party of Florida (RPOF), operating in a number of key battleground states, and owned by Mitt Romney's paid political consultant Nathan Sproul, a man with a long history of allegedly destroying and defrauding Democratic registration forms in election after election, in state after state, year after year, as we explained in our detailed Tuesday morning report describing the latest FL GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal as it first broke...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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The year of GOP election and voter fraud continues...
By Brad Friedman on 9/19/2012 7:51am PT  

No doubt Fox 'News' is going wall-to-wall with this today, so you've got no need for us to tell you about it, right? ... What? They're not? Huh. How strange.

Well, then, if you haven't heard, Lorianne O'Brady, a former staffer to Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) has pleaded "no contest" to five misdemeanor counts of election fraud yesterday, related to creating and submitting fraudulent signatures in a failed conspiracy to qualify McCotter for the ballot this year.

O'Brady is just one of four of top McCotter aides who were charged last month with a total of 36 federal felony and misdemeanor election fraud-related counts in the alleged ballot petition forgery scheme. McCotter abruptly resigned last July as the scandal began to emerge.

While U.S. House candidates in Michigan are required to submit just 1,000 valid voter signatures, McCotter's campaign turned in some 2,000. Investigators discovered, however, that just 244 of them were actually valid. The rest were forged or photo-copied from previous petitions.

Submitting false signatures is the same thing that Fox "News" has spent years falsely claiming the community group ACORN was engaged in. The difference, of course, is that ACORN was the one to have discovered and turned in the handful, among their tens of thousands of voter registration workers, found to have defrauded them in such schemes. ACORN itself was never found to be involved in such fraud, and in every case, it was ACORN themselves who discovered the fraud and sought prosecution for the workers.

McCotter's campaign was hardly the only Republican team involved in submitting fraudulent signatures in hopes of winning a place on the ballot this year. As The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively last January, the Presidential campaign of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was being investigated by the Virginia State Attorney General after the former GOP Presidential candidate's campaign was discovered to have turned in fraudulent signatures in their failed bid to qualify for the Republican Presidential Primary Election in VA, Gingrich's home state. Gingrich was caught on tape claiming to a supporter, after the forgeries were discovered by the state Board of Elections: "We turned in 11,100 --- we needed 10,000 --- 1,500 of them were by one guy who, frankly, committed fraud."

In May of this year, it was discovered that Momentum Political Services, a group hired by the Sacramento GOP and headed by a "professional con artist" to carry out their voter registration campaign for Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), had turned in thousands of fraudulent voter registrations as part of a $50,000 bounty paid for Republican-only voter registrations. That is, of course, exactly what ACORN was falsely accused of, even though --- unlike in the Sacramento GOP case, and in a very similar scheme by a firm hired by the California Republican Party in 2008, where the head of the firm itself pleaded guilty to charges of voter registration fraud --- the former four-decade old community organization was never actually involved in.

For more on the McCotter staffers charged with 36 election fraud-related counts, see our August coverage. As an added bonus, that article also includes a quick round-up of more than 10 recent cases of alleged and confirmed voter fraud and election fraud by a number of very high-profile Republicans, including Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Todd Akin, James O'Keefe, the Sec. of State of Indiana and, yes, the high priestess of GOP Voter Fraud, Ann Coulter.

Of course, none of the fraud detailed above would have been prevented by the disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction schemes Republicans are enacting around the country under the guise of deterring "voter fraud" --- not even Coulter's, since she also committed a felony to create a fraudulent drivers' license with the faked address she submitted to election officials when she committed fraud on her voter registration form, before later, knowingly, voting at a precinct in an area where she did not live in Florida. That, even though there are just 10 known cases of in-person voter impersonation --- the only type of voter fraud that can possibly be deterred by polling place Photo ID restrictions --- in the entire country, out of hundreds of millions of votes cast since 2000.

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Otherwise excellent investigative news project still forwards several unsubstantiated 'voter fraud' myths...
By Brad Friedman on 8/21/2012 11:20am PT  

As with their excellent analysis and database last week finding just ten (10), total, cases of in-person voter fraud in all 50 states since 2000 which might have been deterred by polling place Photo ID restrictions, News 21 --- an investigative reporting project of the Carnegie Corporation and Knight Foundation, based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism --- has published yet another report today that will come as little surprise to long time readers of The BRAD BLOG.

Still, it's helpful to see such reports published at outlets like NBCNews.com which is serving as a partner in the project, since, apparently, it's not enough for us to offer nearly a decade of independently verifiable reports blowing the same whistle on the same scams.

Today's new report focuses on the Rightwing/corporatist American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)'s role in promoting disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction laws, as proposed by Republican legislators in dozens of states over the past two years...

Lawmakers proposed 62 photo ID bills in 37 states in the 2011 and 2012 sessions, with multiple bills introduced in some states. Ten states have passed strict photo ID laws since 2008, though several may not be in effect in November because of legal challenges.

A News21 analysis found that more than half of the 62 bills were sponsored by members or conference attendees of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Washington, D.C., tax-exempt organization.

ALEC has nearly 2,000 state legislator members who pay $100 in dues every two years. Most of ALEC’s money comes from nonprofits and corporations — from AT&T to Bank of America to Chevron to eBay — which pay thousands of dollars in dues each year.
...
ALEC members drafted a voter ID bill in 2009, a year when the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization had $5.3 million in undisclosed corporate and nonprofit contributions, according to Internal Revenue Service documents.

While Ethan Magoc's News21 report mentions ALEC founder (and "conservative movement" demi-god) Paul Weyrich, this :40 second clip of Weyrich --- which we refer to as The Rosetta Stone of the Modern-Day Republican Voter Suppression Movement --- supplies the full context for ALEC's push to disenfranchise largely Democratic-leaning voters through the polling place Photo ID restriction legislation that its members have been introducing in state after state over the past two years...

Go read News21's report in full, though we'd like to offer just one or two minor quibbles to it...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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MI prosecutors: 'Blatant', 'disgraceful' aides 'lost moral compass', were 'completely indifferent to requirements of law'
ALSO: 10+ recent cases of voter fraud by very high-profile GOPers...
By Brad Friedman on 8/10/2012 3:10pm PT  

Given disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction laws Republicans have enacted in nearly a dozen states over the past year, you'd think there was an epidemic of Democratic "voter fraud" in this nation. That's certainly the way the GOP has framed it, fooled the corporate mainstream media into reporting it, and even scammed the White House and Congressional Democrats into going along with it when they signed legislation that defunded ACORN, a four-decade old community organization never found to have committed voter fraud, or even helped to see a single fraudulent vote cast in any election anywhere.

As it turns out, not only is there no such epidemic of Democratic voter fraud, but the opposite is true. Over the past year, very high profile Republicans --- including this year's presumed standard bearer, Mitt Romney; the Sec. of State of Indiana (the first state to institute polling place Photo ID restrictions) Charlie White; one time GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich; MO's new GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate Todd Akin; and the group hired by the Sacramento, CA Republican Party to collect voter registrations this year for Rep. Dan Lungren; among others (all detailed below) --- have each been revealed as having committed or participated in election fraud --- both voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud --- in state after state.

One might even call it "an epidemic". Or, if you prefer, "one of the greatest frauds in voter history, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy," as then GOP Presidential nominee John McCain described what Republicans pretended ACORN was doing back in 2008 (just before it was revealed he had previously been the group's keynote speaker where he told ACORN's members they were "what makes America special.")

So really, should we be surprised to learn that four aides to former long-shot GOP Presidential candidate and U.S. House Rep. Thaddeus McCotter --- Representative of the state's 11th and one of its most Republican districts --- were indicted yesterday on dozens of criminal felony and misdemeanor election fraud charges for having turned in over 1,500 forged and falsified signatures in a "blatant" and "disgraceful" attempt, as the state's Republican AG described it, to qualify the Congressman for this year's ballot?...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Owner of Momentum Political Services has 'extensive criminal history, including prison sentence'
Rep. Lungren's campaign claims innocence despite state's long history of GOP voter registration fraud...
By Brad Friedman on 5/16/2012 3:39pm PT  

The head of a firm which was paid some $50,000 by the Republican Party in Sacramento to sign up new Republican voters this year has "an extensive criminal history, including a prison sentence for stealing from a family she befriended and buying a van with funds stolen from a youth agency."

Moreover, one of the employees that "professional con-artist" Monica Harris, the head of the GOP's Momentum Political Services, hired to work with her at the firm, where she was paid per Republican registration, recently pleaded guilty to fraud charges in a multimillion-dollar mortgage scheme.

The growing scandal, all but ignored by those on the Right who professionally pretend that Democrats and ACORN are stealing elections, underscores yet again the extent to which the Republican Party is willing to go in order to win elections, even while falsely accusing Democrats of undermining them...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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