Well, look who crawled out from under his rock to defend himself on Fox News. How predictable. Voter registration trickster Nathan Sproul is just adamant that his reputation will be restored, because well, it was just a few staffers being naughty. Way to run a business with a 3 million dollar contract, Nate.
Here's what he says:
“We did a very good job,” owner Nathan Sproul, a veteran Republican political operative, insisted. “We have an exceptional record.”
The firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, is at the center of claims that fraudulent and tampered voter registration cards were turned in to election officials in Florida.
"We registered almost 100,000 voters, hired nearly 5,000 workers, and when you hire that many people and do that large of a project, inevitably there's going to be a few people who try and cheat the system," Sproul said. "When that happens, we fire those folks and turn them over for prosecution. That's what happened here," he said.
The company also has faced suspicion for its work registering voters in other states. But Sproul, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican party, blamed fewer than 10 workers for any problems. He said they not only violated company policy but also the law.
"When law enforcement looks into this situation, what they will find is that our company had a systematic effort of quality control," he said. "The handful of people who we caught cheating the system were fired and turned over to investigators for prosecution."
Oh really? Because that's not exactly how things played out. This New York Times report lays it out pretty well. In situations where registration fraud was reported, it wasn't reported by Sproul's firm or his shell companies. It was reported by the voter. The same is true of his operation in Portland in 2004, and the Florida registrations in question. None of them were reported by Sproul's outfit, all were flagged by voters or registrars.
In Nevada, a complaint filed last month with the secretary of state’s office alleged that a woman, Cathy Sue Yancey, was told to tear up a form in which she registered as a Democrat and fill out another one without marking her party affiliation.
The complaint was filed by another woman who said she witnessed the event outside an unemployment office in Henderson, Nev., on Sept. 13. That woman, Gina Greisen, said she and a group of friends had been approached by a man who told them that they needed to update their voter registration. “He talked about voter fraud and mentioned Acorn and illegals voting,” Ms. Greisen said.
You've already read about Mark Jacoby and his connections to Sproul. Jacoby was actually convicted of voter fraud, unlike the voters Republicans routinely accuse.
If Sproul is just a fine, upstanding businessman doing business for the RNC, then why the request for him to do business through shell companies instead of the one he was known for? I think we all know the answer to that one.
One final note on all of this, especially with regard to the RNC's claim that they have zero tolerance for voter registration fraud and acted quickly to sever ties. They knew Sproul was shady and used shady schemes to boost Republican voter registrations in key states. That's why they asked him to operate under a different business name. When everything finally came to light, terminating Sproul was merely a symbolic act. The damage has been done. Will people who thought they registered to vote via Sproul's operatives discover they're not registered? Will they discover it in time to register before the deadline? Doubtful.
The worst part of what the RNC and Sproul did wasn't registering fake people. It was registering only Republicans. Those people who might have registered as Democrats are now lost in a system that might keep them from voting on November 6th. That's true voter suppression, and Sproul should be held fully accountable for it instead of being allowed to toss a few employees under the bus and call himself righteous.
For more firsthand Florida information, visit Beach Peanuts.
