Description
Colorado Republican Committee: $140,000 to the Sproul-connected firm on July 6, 2012.
Brad Friedman has put up a history of Sproul's companies, and their work for Republican interests. They range from antics like gathering signatures to put Nader on the ballot and being banned from Wal-Mart for partisan voting drives to more serious offenses, like allegedly destroying Democratic registration forms in several states while on the payroll of the RNC.
I called Sproul's firm in Arizona to ask about its connection to Strategic Allied Consulting. "I am not at liberty to discuss that," the reception answered bluntly, before transferring me to another employee who gave a similarly coy response. I e-mailed my questions over, and will post a response if they send it. It's also worth noting Sproul hid his tracks in 2008.
For the 2008 campaign cycle, Sproul changed his company's name from Sproul & Associates (an earlier iteration was called Voter Outreach of America) to "Lincoln Strategy Group," and McCain's campaign used a California affiliate to hire him.
Its possible that Romney, like McCain, wanted to utilize Sproul without becoming publicly associated with him. The type of fraud Sproul has been accused of is fairly breathtaking, and seems to dwarf the trumped up charges by Republicans that Democrats have engaged in widespread voter fraud (claims that have been widely debunked).
In 2004, a voter registration Nevada worker hired by Sproul's firm told reporters that he had been ordered to chuck Democratic forms away. "They were thrown away in the trash," he claimed. Sproul's canvassers in Oregon confessed to doing the same thing, and other reports emerged across several swing states. In Minnesota, workers said they were actually fired for bringing in registration forms signed by Democrats.
One of the mysteries with Sproul that I had wondered about while covering this story in the past is why there had never been a serious investigation.
As I pointed out in a blog post earlier this year, even some Republicans thought what Sproul did was uniquely criminal. "The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn't throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out," noted Chris Cannon, a Republican lawmaker from Utah, who later lost his seat because of a right-wing primary challenge, during a congressional hearing on voter suppression. Indeed, many voter registration groups (including ACORN) have paid per-registration form turned in, thus incentivizing fake signatures -- i.e. Mickey Mouse registering to vote. But this type of thing doesn't actually result in fraudulent votes because Mickey Mouse doesn't show up at the polls and try to cast a ballot. Destroying registration forms, on the other hand, means citizens who believed they were registered show up and could have been denied their vote.
Sam Stein reported that in 2004, Senators Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy had demanded an investigation in light of the many reports of Sproul's firm destroying registration forms. But the Department of Justice sat on its hands. "Sproul & Associates clearly merited a full investigation by the Justice Department; and yet the DoJ did nothing," said New York University law professor Mark Miller at the Cannon hearing.
Perhaps Sproul's ties to prominent Republicans helped him escape an investigation.
As Congress and ethics experts loudly called for investigations into Sproul's voter suppression, the Bush administration literally welcomed Sproul and his wife into the White House -- while almost only prosecuting groups associated with registering low-income and poor Americans to vote.