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GOP firm faces voter fraud charge Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/9915462.htmhttp://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/9915462.htm
Posted on Thu, Oct. 14, 2004
GOP-paid firm faces voter-fraud charge
EX-WORKER SAYS HE SAW DEMOS' FORMS TRASHED
By Laura Kurtzman
Mercury News
Democrats in Nevada charged in a lawsuit Wednesday that a company paid by the Republican National Committee destroyed voter-registration forms they had collected from Democratic voters.
Similar allegations have surfaced in Oregon and West Virginia, where the group has been active.
The Nevada allegations were reported Tuesday night by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas about Eric Russell, a former employee of the Republican-funded group, Voters Outreach of America, which also goes by the names America Votes and Project America Votes.
In an affidavit filed with the lawsuit, Russell said he was told to ask prospective voters, ``Who would you vote for in the next election?'' He said he was told to register only those who supported President Bush.
``I personally witnessed my supervisor at VOA, together with her personal assistant, destroy completed registration forms that VOA employees had collected,'' said Russell. ``All of the destroyed registration forms were for registrants who indicated their party preference as `Democrat.' ''
Russell said he registered both Democrats and Republicans and, as a result, his pay was docked. According to the lawsuit against the Clark County Registrar of Voters, he provided copies of destroyed registration forms he retrieved from his supervisor's garbage can.
Russell repeated the allegations in a telephone interview Wednesday with the Mercury News.
GOP-funded outreach
Voters Outreach of America is run by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona GOP political consultant whose firm, Sproul & Associates, has been paid nearly $500,000 by the Republican National Committee to do voter outreach.
Sproul denied Russell's allegations in an interview with the Associated Press and said Russell was a disgruntled employee who had been fired. Sproul did not return calls from the Mercury News.
Wednesday, the Republican National Committee e-mailed affidavits from two people who worked at Voters Outreach of America denying any voter-registration forms had been destroyed. They said all forms were turned in to county recorders' offices or the Nevada Republican Party.
``The Republican Party has a zero-tolerance policy for anything that smacks of impropriety in registering voters,'' said Jim Dyke of the Republican National Committee. He accused Democrats of indulging in ``selective outrage'' that ignored wrongdoing by Democratic groups, but did not provide specifics.
Sproul's group also has been active in Oregon, where state officials Wednesday said they were investigating a man featured in a Portland television report saying he ``might'' destroy Democratic registration forms. It was not clear for whom the man worked.
Lawsuits alleging electoral irregularities also have been filed in Florida. Wednesday, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a suit seeking to require election officials to count provisional ballots regardless of where they are cast.
Tuesday, unions and voting-rights groups sued to stop Florida officials from disqualifying more than 10,000 incomplete registration forms, accusing the state of overly restrictive rules that disproportionately hurt minority voters.
Manual recount issue
Also Tuesday, plaintiffs in another suit met with aides to Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood to discuss how counties with touch-screen voting should conduct manual recounts. The state had banned recounts in such counties, but an administrative law judge, responding to a suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups, threw out that rule in August.
Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Hood, a Republican who was appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush, said the lawsuits were politically motivated and were eroding voter confidence.
``They are questioning every single law that we are following and that we are complying with, federal or state,'' she said. ``And I think it's inappropriate for them to be doing this at the 11th hour.''
The lawsuit regarding voter-registration forms, filed in federal court in Miami, stems from Hood's recent recommendation to throw out forms on which registrants did not check a box indicating they are U.S. citizens, even if they signed an oath at the bottom of the form swearing they are.
It charges that while some registrants fixed their incomplete forms before the Oct. 4 deadline, elections officials did not always process them in time, and did not let other registrants know their forms were flawed. It charges Hood and elections supervisors in Broward, Duval, Miami-Dade and Orange counties with violating federal election law and the Voting Rights Act.
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