Earlier this week it was revealed that a firm hired by the RNC was producing fraudulent voter registration in Florida, but what was previously limited to an isolated incident in Palm Beach County has now spread to 10 counties according to the LA Times.
WASHINGTON — Florida elections officials said Friday that at least 10 counties have identified suspicious and possibly fraudulent voter registration forms turned in by a firm working for the Republican Party of Florida, which has filed an election fraud complaint with the state Division of Elections against its one-time consultant.
The controversy in Florida -- which began with possibly fraudulent forms that first cropped up in Palm Beach County -- has engulfed the Republican National Committee, which admitted Thursday that it urged state parties in seven swing states to hire the firm, Strategic Allied Consulting.The RNC paid the company at least $3.1 million -- routed through the state parties of Florida, Nevada, Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia -- to register voters and run get out the vote operations. Wisconsin and Ohio had not yet paid the firm for get-out-the-vote operations it was contracted to do.
The irony is inescapable considering the waves Florida Governor Rick Scott made earlier this year when he vowed to cleanse the voter registration rolls of undesirables.
And as you may recall, Governor Rick Scott unveiled a list of potential non-citizens which he intended to purge from the voter registration rolls earlier this year that included over 189,000 names. After being ruled unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court, Scott obtained access to a Homeland Security database and used it to narrow the list down to 2600 names. After the list of 2600 names was found to be inaccurate, the purge was halted.
Independent analysis showed that the list of names would have primarily effected minority voters who, not coincidentally, tend to vote Democratic. This factored into the State Supreme Court's original decision, and the Florida chapter of the Tea Party is now seeking revenge on several sitting judges.
According to the Miami Herald, the purge was restarted on Wednesday of this week and the list was once again narrowed down to only 198 names but it still may or may not be accurate.
Florida’s noncitizen voter-purge program roared back to life Wednesday when Gov. Rick Scott’s elections department produced a new list of 198 potentially ineligible voters — including 36 who might have cast ballots illegally. [...]
Of this list of 198 potential noncitizens, about 58 percent are minority — 41 percent Hispanic and 17 percent black.
Democrats account for 44 percent of the potential noncitizens on this list and 41 percent of the overall active voter rolls, a Herald analysis found. More than a third of the list is made up of no-party-affiliation voters, who account for about a fifth of the rolls. Republicans make up 16 percent of the purge list and 36 percent of the overall voter rolls.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence, right?
I don't believe 198 voters is enough to swing an election, but one person wrongfully denied their right to vote is one too many.