Stealing An Election: Voter Fraud Discovered In Virginia, Florida
It's the antithesis of democracy-promoting behavior -- engaging in voter fraud.

Mike Lillis writes at The Hill:

Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and the field director for his father's reelection bid, resigned abruptly Wednesday after a video linked him to voter fraud.

The video -- released earlier in the day by Project Veritas, a conservative organization headed by the Republican activist James O'Keefe -- revealed that the younger Moran had weighed options for helping an undercover operative cast votes on behalf of 100 people who allegedly weren't planning to vote.

"There will be a lot of voter protection, so, if they just have, you know, the utility bill or bank statement -- bank statement would obviously be tough ... but faking a utility bill would be easy enough," Moran says, apparently referring to options for getting around Virginia's voter ID laws.

This guy, on the Republican side, was arrested last week for it. Brad Friedman writes for Salon on October 19:

The man arrested today was 23-year-old Colin Small of Phoenixville, Pa. As it turns out, he does not only work for the Virginia Republican Party. According to an online profile, he appears to be working for the Republican National Committee and, prior to that, served as an Intern for Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Small was "working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee."

He was first hired, says Tanfani, by Strategic Allied Consulting, the firm owned by the disgraced GOP operative and paid Mitt Romney political consultant Nathan Sproul. Even before this year's registration fraud scandal, which began with Strategic in Florida, Sproul's companies have long been accused of, though never charged with, destroying Democratic voter registrations in election after election and state after state, going back to at least 2004. Despite that, Sproul was hired by the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2004, by the McCain/Palin Campaign in 2008, and by Romney during the Republican Primary cycle.

Sproul's company, Strategic Allied Consulting, was hired by the RNC in August for more than $3 million, reportedly as its sole voter registration company this cycle. His company was said to have been fired by the RNC and five different battleground state Republican parties several weeks ago, after fraudulent voter registrations began to emerge across Florida. Some of those questionable applications included address changes for existing voters, such that Florida election officials told the BRAD BLOG they worry voters could find themselves disenfranchised come Election Day. In Florida, as in many states, provisional ballots cast at precincts other than where voters are officially registered will not be counted. So changing the addresses on voter registrations without voters' knowledge is a serious crime with potentially very serious consequences.

More on voter fraud in Florida from the LAT's Joseph Tanfani, Matea Gold and Melanie Mason:

WASHINGTON -- Election officials in at least 11 Florida counties have uncovered potentially fraudulent voter registration forms submitted on behalf of the state GOP, a debacle that has punctured a hole in the Republican National Committee's get-out-the-vote operation less than six weeks before election day.

By Friday, elections supervisors had found dozens of forms turned in by the party that had wrong birthdays or spellings of names that didn't match signatures. In other cases, multiple forms were filled out in the same handwriting. One voter in Palm Beach County was registered to an address that is a Land Rover dealership.

"It was that flagrant," said Ann W. Bodenstein, the elections supervisor in Santa Rosa County, where officials found 100 problematic applications -- including one for a dead voter. "In no way did they look genuine."

The controversy comes at an odd time for the GOP. Republican lawmakers across the country have proposed or enacted tough voter ID laws, arguing the legislation is needed to combat voter fraud. Democrats are battling the laws in the courts and say they are designed to discourage Democratic constituencies, such as African Americans, from voting.

The Florida GOP had contracted out its registration efforts to a newly formed company called Strategic Allied Consulting. The RNC had urged party organizations in seven swing states to hire the firm, directing at least $3.1 million in payments to it.

The RNC and its state affiliates hastily cut ties with Strategic Allied Consulting when the first questionable forms were discovered in Palm Beach County. On Thursday, the Republican Party of Florida, which paid at least $1.3 million for the voter registration work, filed a complaint of voter fraud against the firm. And the state Division of Elections turned over the problematic forms to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Strategic Allied is run by an Arizona-based consultant and Republican Party activist named Nathan Sproul, who has been dogged by charges in the past that his employees destroyed Democratic registration forms. No charges were ever filed. But his reputation is such that Sproul said RNC officials requested that he set up a new firm so the party would not be publicly linked to the past allegations. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.

Sean Spicer, an RNC spokesman, disputed Sproul's contention. "To my knowledge, no one requested that," he said.