Suspicious Voter Registrations Found In Florida Counties

Florida Republicans fired Virginia-based Strategic Allied Consulting after suspicions arose that the vendor submitted over a hundred questionable new voter registrations in Florida’s Palm Beach County, The Associated Press reported on Friday.

The company was in charge of helping to register and turnout voters in the state and had been paid more than $1.3 million by the Republican Party of Florida. The AP reported that the Republican National Committee also used the company for close to $3 million of work in North Carolina, Colorado, Virginia and Nevada.

The Los Angeles Times also reported that election officials in Florida stated that at least 10 counties have found possibly fraudulent voter registrations submitted by the company. Other counties possibly involved included Lee, Bay, Clay, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Escambia, Duval and Miami-Dade counties.

RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer told the AP, “We have zero tolerance for any threat to the integrity of elections. When we were informed of an alleged incident we immediately cut all ties to the company.”

Florida Republican Party Executive Director Mike Grissom issued a statement, saying, “We immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter-registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter-registration fraud in Florida.”

Palm Beach County was at the center of debate for the disputed ballots in the 2000 presidential race, the AP reported. According to Strategic Allied Consulting, the questionable registrations came from one individual and the company was working with election officials in Florida.

Vicki Davis, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, told the LA Times, “There might be an occasional one, but I don’t think we’ve ever had this number of counties that have had this number of cases all at the same time.

Fred Petti, an attorney for Strategic Allied Consulting, said, “Strategic has a zero-tolerance policy for breaking the law. Accordingly, once we learned of the irregularities in Palm Beach County, we were able to trace all questionable card to one individual and immediately terminated our working relationship with the individual in question.”

The AP reported that staff working for Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher noticed similar signatures and incomplete forms submitted by the company on September 5. According to the LA Times, registrations were filed under the names of real voters but signatures were forged, fake house numbers were given, incorrect birth dates were written and some even had social security numbers missing.

On Monday, Bucher met with prosecutors to call for an investigation.

Recent polls show that President Obama is leading Republican nominee in several key swing states, including Florida. According to the AP, Romney would need to sweep Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada if he lost Florida in the November election.

Florida voter registration deadline for the presidential election is October 9.