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Sat 23 Oct, 2004 12:04 pm
Oct 23, 7:01 AM EDT
GOP Voter Drive Accused of Tossing Cards
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
In several battleground states across the country, a consulting firm funded by the Republican National Committee has been accused of deceiving would-be voters and destroying Democratic voter registration cards.
Arizona-based Sproul & Associates is under investigation in Oregon and Nevada over claims that canvassers hired by the company were instructed to register only Republicans and to get rid of registration forms completed by Democrats.
"We treat these complaints very seriously," said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. The Democratic office-holder said three complaints were filed with election officials throughout the state. He declined to provide details, citing the continuing investigation.
Substitute teacher Adam Banse wanted a summer job with flexible hours, so he signed up to knock on doors in suburban Minneapolis and register people to vote.
He quit after two hours. "They said if you bring back a bunch of Democratic cards, you'll be fired," Banse contends. "At that point, I said, `Whoa. Something's wrong here.'"
Nathan Sproul, a former head of Arizona's Republican Party and the state's Christian Coalition branch, denies any wrongdoing and accuses Democrats of making things up.
"This is all about making accusations," Sproul said Thursday. "They allege fraud where none exists and get the media to cover it."
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Heather Layman responded that her party accepts all voters, and she accused the Democratic Party of operating under this mandate: "If no sign of voter fraud exists, make it up, manipulate the media into covering baseless charges and spread fear."
A federal judge says he needs more time to consider a big voter registration case in Florida.
Sproul declined to name the states in which his company conducted registration drives. His political consulting firm was founded last year and has received nearly $500,000 from the RNC since July, according to federal election records.
Former canvassers such as Banse have come forward in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Oregon in the past two weeks alleging they were told to register only Republicans and to "walk away" from people who said they intended to vote for Democrat John Kerry.
Some said Democratic registration forms had been thrown out or ripped up.
It is illegal to tamper with voter registration cards, which are numbered and issued by local election officials. In some states, including Oregon, such acts are felonies.
Eric Russell of Las Vegas told The Associated Press that he watched a Sproul supervisor tear up eight to 10 registration forms completed by Democrats and managed to grab some of the shredded documents as evidence. State officials are investigating his claim.
Russell said that Voters Outreach of America, the name under which Sproul employees operated in Nevada and other states, owes him hundreds of dollars for registering residents but refuses to pay him.
Sproul called Russell simply a disgruntled employee.
Prompted by Russell's accusations, Clark County Democrats unsuccessfully went to court last week to try to persuade a state judge to reopen voter registration in their county, which encompasses Las Vegas.
In West Virginia, Lisa Bragg said she refused a sorely needed $9-an-hour job to register voters after attending an orientation session conducted by Sproul employees.
Like Banse in Minnesota, she said canvassers were discouraged from registering Democrats and were told to misrepresent themselves as poll takers.
Bragg, who filed a complaint earlier this week with the West Virginia secretary of state's office, said Friday that canvassers were given a script that read at the bottom, "Our goal is to register Republicans."
She called the registration drive dishonest, adding, "I believe everyone has the right to vote. Even though I'm a Democrat, I would have registered Republicans to vote."
In Pennsylvania, Democrats in the state House of Representatives have asked the attorney general to investigate complaints from former Sproul canvassers who said they had been instructed to not register Democrats. About 40 to 50 also complained they had not been promptly paid.
In Pittsburgh, library patrons protested that Sproul employees were pressuring people to register as Republicans at tables set up outside a Carnegie Library branch.
A similar incident was reported in Oregon in September, when the manager of Medford library headquarters refused a Sproul request to register voters after learning the firm was affiliated with Republicans.
Justice Dept. Weighs in on Ohio Ballots
Justice Dept. Weighs in on Ohio Ballots
Fri Oct 22,10:15 PM ET
By JOHN NOLAN, Associated Press Writer
CINCINNATI - Ohio Democrats did not have the right to challenge a state requirement that voters show up at their assigned polling place to cast a ballot, lawyers for the Justice Department told a federal appeals court Friday.
Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell is within his authority under federal law to require that a voter appear at the correct polling place, Department of Justice lawyers contended in written arguments filed with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The federal government may sue in order to enforce its provisions, but federal law does not grant private parties that right, the Justice Department contended in its brief in support of Blackwell. The Justice Department is not a party in the lawsuit, which Ohio Democrats filed against Blackwell, a Republican.
Blackwell says the state has the authority to administer elections. The Justice Department lawyers backed that position, arguing that the law does not conflict with, or pre-empt, Ohio's precinct-based system of voting.
In a response to a lawsuit Democrats filed against Blackwell, a federal judge ruled on Oct. 14 that Ohio voters who show up at the wrong polling place on Election Day still can cast ballots as long as they are in the county where they are registered. Blackwell has appealed U.S. District Judge James Carr's decision to the 6th Circuit court, which has ordered written arguments from both sides and could rule early next week.
Steve Hartman, a lawyer for the Ohio Democratic Party, said Friday he was not surprised by the Justice Department's filing. Hartman declined further comment, saying he had not read all of the government's arguments. The Democrats' written arguments are to be filed on Saturday with the appeals court, which may also decide to hear oral arguments on Tuesday.
The Ohio Democratic Party and a coalition of labor and voter rights groups had argued that Blackwell's order discriminated against the poor and minorities.
Carr last week had blocked Blackwell's directive to Ohio's 88 county boards of election that poll workers must send voters to their correct precinct. The judge said that voters who go to the wrong polling place after moving and those whose names cannot be found on the registration rolls should be able to cast provisional ballots there.
Denying any voter the right to a provisional vote will erode confidence in the election and the incentive to vote, the judge said.
Similar court battles are under way in other states. In Florida, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that the state must reject provisional ballots if they are cast in the wrong precinct.
In Michigan, a federal judge said those ballots must be counted if cast by voters at the wrong precinct but in the right city, township or village. In Missouri and Colorado, judges have ruled that votes in the wrong place don't have to be counted.
Provisional ballots are not counted until after the election. They are set aside and inspected by Democratic and Republican election board employees to establish their validity.
States nationwide have adopted individual standards for when a provisional ballot can be cast and counted. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia require a provisional ballot to be cast in the correct precinct, or it will not count.
More than 100,000 provisional votes were cast in Ohio in the 2000 election ?- or about 2 percent of the total vote in the presidential election. President Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore in Ohio by 3.6 percentage points.
Democrats and Republicans in Ohio have been trading allegations of voting improprieties in the weeks before the Nov. 2 election.
On Friday, state Republicans filed challenges to about 35,000 voter registrations where election cards were returned as undeliverable by the U.S. Postal Service. Nearly half the challenges were in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland.
Jeff Flint, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party in Cuyahoga County, said the returned registrations were a sign that independent soft-money groups were engaging in a "systematic effort" to "undermine the Ohio election process."
David Sullivan, voter protection coordinator for the Ohio Democratic Party, called Friday's challenges an "unprecedented effort to throw tens of thousands of voters off of Ohio's voting rolls," and said the returned mail is not proof of invalid registrations.
Jane Platten, spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said officials were meeting to discuss how to handle the challenges and insisted they would be handled by Election Day.
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Associated Press Writer Jay Cohen contributed to this report.
Yes it seems its the popular thing to do by both parties......
Let the games begin....
Armyvet35 wrote:Yes it seems its the popular thing to do by both parties......
Let the games begin....
too true av35. more than enough stinkers on all sides of this election.
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