Excellent management skills from Mitt Romney and the RNC:
The Republican National Committee has abruptly cut ties to a consulting firm hired for get-out-the-vote efforts in seven presidential election swing states after Florida prosecutors launched an investigation into possible fraud in voter registration forms.
Working through state parties, the RNC has sent more than $3.1 million this year to Strategic Allied Consulting, a company formed in June by Nathan Sproul, an Arizona voting consultant. Sproul has operated other firms that have been accused in past elections of improprieties designed to help Republican candidates, including dumping registration forms filled out by Democrats, but none of those allegations led to any criminal charges.
This is voter registration fraud, not “voter fraud” and this is how it happened: the job was outsourced to a for-profit and low-wage, poorly-trained temps who have no actual interest in or commitment to either voting rights or their short-term employer met a goal by turning in forms.
You’ll forgive me if I gloat a little here, because it gets better. They also outsourced GOTV:
Strategic Allied Consulting was hired to do voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada, and had been planning get-out-the-vote drives in Ohio and Wisconsin, according to Sproul.
Sproul owns another company, Lincoln Strategy Group, that was paid about $70,000 by the Mitt Romney campaign during the primaries to gather signatures. He said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the request of the Republican National Committee because of the bad publicity stemming from the past allegations. In 2004, there were allegations in states such as Nevada and Oregon that employees of his firm — which had a similar contract with the RNC — registered Democratic voters and then destroyed their forms. (Sproul noted that no criminal charges were ever filed.)
“In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company’s name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet,” Sproul said.
The RNC’s rapid decision to distance itself from the company derailed a major voter registration drive just six weeks before the presidential election, which could hinge on voter turnout in about eight battleground states. It also comes as Republicans around the country have sought to make voter fraud an issue, in part by pressing for voter identification laws.
The Party that has conducted a full-blown voter suppression strategy since 2005 outsourced voter registration and GOTV to a for-profit operator with a terrible track record, and now they’ll be scrambling to find warm bodies 6 weeks before a presidential election.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.
Elizabelle
Heard a tidbit or two about Nathan Sproul, and was wondering when the sh*t would hit the fan.
Six weeks before election day. Superb.
And — to be fair, since I just trolled mistermix: Way to step on a ghost’s post, dudette.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
It’s true. I’m sorry, This time I have no excuse. I didn’t look.
lacp
RNC knew exactly what it was getting; probably never figured that Florida prosecutors would actually look into this. Hope Sproul & Co. get to keep every penny.
JGabriel
__
__
LA Times:
That makes sense. I can see how the GOP wouldn’t want its target audience distracted from false information.
.
kd bart
It’s good news for McCain!!
Comrade Mary
You see what I’m doing here? I’m kvelling. I’m kvelling like a motherfucker even though I’m a lapsed Catholic because it’s the only appropriate word.
I knew you could fuck that chicken, Republicans! I KNEW it!
/pinches cheeks galore
Kay
@JGabriel:
I love how it reeks of cronyism. It’s impossible to get fired if one is a well-connected conservative.
gene108
Just proves how much better for-profit entities operate than government and non-profits.
jayjaybear
Sproul was also deep in the muck in 2004, which is what the name-change thing above is about. Several Dem Senators actually contacted the Ashcroft DoJ at the time to investigate Sproul’s group, but of course (since it was the Ashcroft DoJ) nothing was actually done.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning ;-)
feebog
Speaking of bonuses, I was reading somewhere (TRMS?) how many more paid people Team Obama has around the country compared to Team rMoney. But the staffing costs were almost the same. Obama employs more staffers but pays them less. But one big reason that the rMoney ground campaign is so expensive is because they paid out big bonuses to their top staffers last month. Bonuses. For running what is arguably the worst Presidential campaign in history.
Lurking Canadian
But, but, outsourcing and free market competition make everything better for everybody! Tom Friedman’s been telling me that for twenty years now, and if you can’t trust The Stache, who can you trust?
Kay
@jayjaybear:
And Mitt Romney hired him. After that.
Did you know Romney has a business background? He does. That’s his main selling point.
Xecky Gilchrist
But one big reason that the rMoney ground campaign is so expensive is because they paid out big bonuses to their top staffers last month. Bonuses. For running what is arguably the worst Presidential campaign in history.
This is the kind of thing that makes Citizens United merely horrible instead of super-horrible: Republicans are incapable of spending money non-corruptly.
Comrade Mary
@feebog: Apart from being all-purpose febrile idiots, it sounds as if Romney’s team has brought into the myth that paying people is the best way to motivate them. They obviously haven’t read (or watched) Dan Pink on the topic of intrinsic motivation.
Maude
@Kay:
These guys are so incompetent that they can’t even steal an election What is the world coming to?
It’s fine to have posts done quickly. That’s why we made John, albeit kicking and screaming, put up the current comments after the Vista remake.
robertdsc-iPhone 4
Fuck ’em.
Kay
@Maude:
I try to look so I don’t step on anyone, but I get all het up over voting.
I want you to know the GOTV team in THIS Ohio county are volunteers who live here :)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@feebog:
__
During the Republican primaries we assumed that while Newt, Cain and others were obviously just in it to grift the GOP and its donors out of as much money as possible, Romney was serious and was actually making a real run at the WH. And the evidence cited was the professionalism and polish of the Romney campaign compared with the amateurishness of the others. Perhaps the time has come to reassess this assumption.
Comrade Mary
@Kay:
No need to apologize for that. God, that’s why we cherish you. This is Big News, and we all know how to scroll.
The Republic of Stupidity
Looks like Sproul has failed conservatism…
Ah Schadenfreude… sweet, sweet Schadenfreude…
And it’s beginning to look like 2012 will be a landmark vintage…
danimal
(Insert witty comment about Republicans, projection and voter fraud.)
SSDD
Calouste
Of course the executives will get bonuses, they are like tax cuts. Things are going well, executives get a performance bonus, things are going badly, executives get a bonus not to jump the sinking ship, things are going mediocre, obviously the executives need a bonus because they aren’t motivated enough.
Mnemosyne
@feebog:
I’m guessing that the Romney campaign made the common CEO assumption that in order to run things well, you need moar managers. Since the Obama campaign is not made up of business geniuses like Romney’s folks, they knew that what they would need was lots and lots of low-level people who could do the grunt work and only a few managers to coordinate things.
Essentially, the Obama campaign chose customer service (low-level campaign workers) over management and, not surprisingly, they’re whipping Romney. In a campaign, you need warm bodies to get out there and do the actual work of lining up voters and getting them registered, not managers who sit on their asses and talk to reporters.
Legalize
Brilliant. Willard outsourced his GOTV operation in critical states to a corrupt organization that couldn’t give two shits about actually getting him elected. Meanwhile, here in SW Ohio, I see Team O volunteers everywhere. I haven’t seen or heard of any Team Willard people making similar efforts. And this news explains it – Team O volunteers care about getting their guy re-elected; and Team Willard’s paid crooks are just looking for a quick score.
Villago Delenda Est
The Rethuglican party is a criminal organization.
Pure and simple.
nitpicker
Why has no one publicly made the ACORN connection here? A majority of Republicans believed in late 2008 that ACORN had stolen the presidency for Obama because they had hired workers who had played the exact same kind of registration tricks as this Republican outfit. Why isn’t someone on the left pointing out that “Look, we don’t think the Republicans were trying to steal the election, so we have to ask them, will they apologize to ACORN or admit to fraud?”
22over7
Sproul’s alleged and totally unproven (convicted? Never convicted!) operation is of course a feature and not a bug. Weren’t we just talking about republicans planning on serious vote tampering? But getting cold feet about it six weeks out is another thing. I guess none of the perpetrators really wanted it enough to go to jail for it.
As for the get-out-the-vote volunteers, heck, mormons to the rescue! Everyone will be thrilled about that.
Off to the chiropractor’s. Messed up my neck something awful yesterday.
Pat_AlexVA
I don’t know about other states, but in Florida, you need to be registered 29 days before the election. So yes – they lose a major registration drive for 2 WEEKS before the registration deadline. But it’s not a 6 week loss (in Florida).
What really sucks is those folks that think they registered to vote, but had their registration tossed in the trash.
OK, I get it – the fact they were also doing GOTV is the issue. Still, it’s horrible that people who think they’ve registered to vote – they have 2 weeks to confirm it… Otherwise, it’s too late and they show up at the polls and aren’t on the rolls.
RandyH
But but but ACORN!
Villago Delenda Est
Do you know what outsourcing actually is?
It’s a CYA mechanism.
You can always shrug your shoulders and say “well, the vendor screwed up, not me”. The entire purpose of military support outsourcing (Rachel Maddow covers this in Drift) is a CYA operation to not take responsibility for war, to ignore the Constitution. The Executive and the Legislative branches have collaborated in this…to have a war without being formal about it and taking responsibility for it.
Mittens is doing the same thing with this. He can shrug his shoulders and say that it’s the contractor’s fault, not his.
But it’s still his fault. His ass in not covered. You can delegate authority, but you can never delegate responsibility.
The fail belongs to Mittens. All of it.
Yutsano
@Comrade Mary: Dan Pink is wicked smaht and very entertaining to listen to. He’s also quite the handsome devil. This whole talk (it’s actually about an hour) is on YouTube.
Kay
@nitpicker:
Steve Benen:
It’s a great point, but right now I’m more interested in two things: they had to pay GOTV people, and, they don’t have anything set up in eight swing states.
Anne Laurie posted a clip from Colorado where the RNC voter reg person was described as a “volunteer”. It’s bullshit. They’re lying. She was paid, which came out two days later. Why are they lying about “volunteers”?
Litlebritdifrnt
On top of this is that Huffpo piece I linked to earlier stating that Team O have registered 250,000 new voters in NC, the most in any state in the country.
Villago Delenda Est
@nitpicker:
ACORN’S crime was going out and registering the wrong kind of people, then turning in ALL the registration forms, to include the ones ACORN thought were suspect, into the local elections office for the elections office to make the call on the validity. This outfit apparently deliberately destroyed registration forms filled out by the wrong kind of people.
ACORN was punished for being honest. This outfit is rewarded for being dishonest.
The incentives are totally out of sync.
Linda Featheringill
So which is it, Republicans don’t know how to do computer searches or they don’t care about the history of the hired help?
legion
This is what I love about Republicans – they talk a great game about running government like a business, but they’re incompetent at business, too! what’s one of the fundamental rules? “You get what you pay for.”
jibeaux
@Litlebritdifrnt: Good. Obama can take us or leave us, but we have a gubernatorial race with unfavorable odds to deal with.
Jay in Oregon
@Comrade Mary:
Offer not valid for teachers, auto workers, and generally just people who make less than $50,000/year.
jheartney
From having done it I can tell you that voter registration is a slow, labor-intensive business. If you’re going door-to-door you’re doing good to get three cards out of a two-hour shift. (Sometimes you hit gold, but other times you’ll get bupkis out of the whole shift.) Trying to do that with paid canvassers either means you’ll get meager results or fake results.
Volunteers are better than paid canvassers both because they have no incentive to commit fraud, and because the volunteers are people who aren’t so marginal that they have to try to make a living from canvassing.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
No one likes Romney unless they’re being paid to like him.
scav
Don’t forget the timey-wimey detail that they ramped up awareness of voter fraud to the leventies so that govt. agencies are looking for it and then hired somebody to try to practice it. Flowchart that one for me: I think powerpoint can handle it, viseo might be overkill.
jheartney
Also, intentionally destroying voter registration forms is o felony. Anybody who does it ought to do time.
amk
Thx Kay. Tweeted it. (sorry, the best I could do as a fecking furriner)
karen marie
It wouldn’t make any difference for the presidential election, I suppose, but it would be funny if the signatures gathered for Romney were investigated and it were discovered that he wasn’t eligible to even be on the ballot for multiple state primaries that got him the nomination. Hahahahaha.
Litlebritdifrnt
@jibeaux:
I know with the legislature we have if that POS McCrory gets in we’re in fucking big trouble.
Ben Cisco
@Litlebritdifrnt: LOVE. THIS.
Redshift
@Legalize: Here in Virginia, some of our volunteers ran into their first Romney canvassers a couple of weeks ago. They were friendly enough, so they were able to find out that they were paid canvassers, making $13 an hour.
I could look up exactly how many volunteer shifts we’ve had just in the 1/7 of our county that’s covered by the team I’m on, but suffice it to say that at $13/hr, it would add up to real money even for the Romney campaign (since SuperPAC money can’t go for that, at least if the campaign is going to get the results.)
Of course, I don’t think they’re actually spending that much, instead it shows how weak their effort is.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Linda Featheringill:
__
They do care about the history of the hired help (obligatory Mae West quote: “Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself”). In this case the help was hired to do just exactly what computer searches would have shown of their past history. The Republicans just assumed they wouldn’t get caught cheating.
EconWatcher
OT, but I have defended my Senator Jim Webb on this site, even though he goes his own way on the issues. If you want to know why so many people respect Webb, read these comments he made about Romney (from Sully’s site). In its dignified, quiet, and sincere way, it’s the most devastating takedown of Romney that I’ve seen yet:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/romney-gets-webbed.html
Redshift
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I don’t think it’s necessarily that Romney isn’t seriously running for president, it’s that there no longer any Republican firms to hire that aren’t primarily grifters.
In the beginning of the Reagan era, there were a lot of people who knowingly parroted BS arguments because it got them what they wanted. (“Tax cuts increase revenue? Sure!”) Now we have a generation who have grown up with it and sincerely believe the snake oil works, and that’s bad.
However, we also have a generation who’ve grown up watching grifting being the best path to success, so they all want to be grifters not for an ideological cause, but for the money. And once you don’t actually care if Republicans win, the best targets are the snake-oil believers, so more and more, they’re turning the grifting on each other.
So I guess it all balances out, in a way. It’s a weird way for a party to die, but it seems awfully fitting.
El Cid
I’m assuming this discovery was the result of brave and dogged investigation by journalist and heroic citizen James O’Keefe?
David Hunt
Just more evidence of the GOP projection of their on multitude of voter sins onto their opponents. When I see this sort of story I see Claude Rains declaring that “I am shocked, shocked, to discover that gambling is taking place in the establishment!”
jibeaux
@Litlebritdifrnt: The polls on this, I’m afraid, are shit. It’s going to take coattails like a mothafucka.
And it’s weird because Civitas just did a poll that was reasonably encouraging for every other state race, including lt. gov. How can there be that many people breaking one way for governor and the other for lt. gov?
jibeaux
@Litlebritdifrnt: We also probably dodged a bullet in ’08 thanks to the coattails, but I think it’s going to be harder this year.
mary
The League of Women Voters traditionally does voter registrations before federal elections. When Florida changed its law making the registrar personally liable for the accuracy of the voter’s registration. The LWV stopped registering voters in Florida. This has been a big concern for them. So a company was hired to register voters. It was found to be be fraudulent. Will the company be criminally charged?
gbear
I just spent 15 minutes talking to someone at work who said she had really wanted to vote for Romney (they usually vote straight ticket republican except for the unpalatable Michele Bachmann), but from the little bits of info she’s picked up about Romney, she’s decided that she can’t stand him because he’s so out of touch with regular people so she’s going to vote for Obama instead. She said she’s realized that Obama’s been trying his hardest, is doing a pretty good job and he’s one of us. It was a nice conversation.
quannlace
If this whole campaign was a movie on HBO, you’d start to think ‘ now, this is getting a little far-fetched…’
rlrr
Jay Roach might have another directing gig next year…
Kay
@mary:
It’s disgusting what conservatives have done to the League of Women Voters. They’ve taken a non-partisan group and turned them into yet another Enemy of Conservatism. They’ve destroyed the whole concept of non-partisan, good-government voting rights groups.
Ruckus
@feebog:
The only way to stop ratwhores from jumping ship is to make them bigger ratwhores.
In english, “You gotta pay me more or I leave and tell all!”
Villago Delenda Est
@mary:
Governor Lex Luthor holding a LexCorp subsidiary legally responsible for its criminal activities?
It’s far more likely that I’ll be crowned Tsar of all the Russias next week.
trollhattan
@quannlace:
Am looking forward to “Game Change, Also, Too” to entertain us all with tales of the voyage of WMR Failboat. Casting suggestions always welcome.
rlrr
@trollhattan:
Here’s someone who could play Paul Ryan…
The Republic of Stupidity
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Indeed… indeed…
Yet another sad case of Republican Electile Dysfunction…
Linda Featheringill
That’s good enough.
Ruckus
@legion:
“You get what you pay for.”
They paid for overpriced ratwhores, they got overpriced ratwhores.
I see how that works.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Ruckus: They paid for overpriced ratwhores, they got overpriced ratwhores.
OK, that explains it.
I was thinking that, if anything, Republicans strive to provide counterexamples to “you get what you pay for.”
cckids
@Legalize:
Here in NV, too. OFA has come to my house 3 times, got my daughter registered (she’s going to be 18 in late October), called back to be sure she didn’t have any questions about the registration & to let her know when her voter reg. card will come, invite us via email & text to every Obama or Obama surrogate event in the Vegas area, & asked politely if we’d like to work with the campaign.
Romney people haven’t been around at all, and this is a heavily Mormon area.
I’ve seen one yard sign; this in an area where yard signs are pretty popular, there are lots out for Heller & Heck (the R’s running for Senate & House), ONE for Romney. My neighbor, the retired cop, just can’t hold bring himself to vote for Romney. He won’t switch on the down ticket races, but he’s voting for Obama.
Linda Featheringill
In addition to Littlebritdifferent’s encouraging words, a non-mathematical interpretation by the author of the polls cited in the thread below:
http://election.princeton.edu/
Sam Wang: “The Presidency and control of the Senate are nearly certain to go to the Democrats. The House is very much in play, but Democrats have a slight advantage. This is why Nancy Pelosi and Bill Kristol are speaking as they are. This is also why much smart money is now flowing downticket – where it can make a difference.”
Being told that the House is “very much in play” can keep me going for days and days. Let’s go.
aimai
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, we’ve all been saying this for a while but Mr. Aimai and I were wondering how long before Romney torches the RNC, tossing the computers and air conditioners out the window to waiting hands, and finishes off this Mafia Style Bust Out? Did he buy failed Campaign insurance or is he betting against himself on intrade? That’s the only way this craptacular campaign makes any sense. I heard one of their paid shills explaining on NPR that although its true that Ryan and Ryan’s plan are dragging them down all over the country no one could have expected that and Romney should have been able to simply put Ryan on the ticket and never address Ryan’s plan at all. Unfair! Unfair! Also: no one could have known!
aimai
ThresherK
Leftover from last thread: “Sad trombones” isn’t the sound of failure we’re thinking of, is it? Can a real jazzcat tell me? I’d bet my stack of swing 78s that it’s a classic plunger-muted trumpet.
nellcote
“The North Carolina Republican Party has fired the shady voter registration firm owned by Mitt Romney’s paid political consultant and longtime GOP operative, Nathan Sproul. The firing came as Democrats in the state were on the brink of denouncing the Republicans’ tie to the operative’s firm.”
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9592#more-9592
Adding up the RNC/Rmoney/state goopers, Sproule has made 6M+ this election cycle.
Ruckus
@aimai:
Projection!
No one could have known. Projection. They are too stupid and have their heads so far up their asses they can’t see anything but doesn’t mean the rest of us do. Of course you know that.
Projection. It’s the only thing conservatives are good at.
The Lodger
@Linda Featheringill: Their mistake was neither. They assumed the Palm Beach County director of elections either wouldn’t notice the faxe registrations or would play along with them.
Between Susan Bucher and Ion Sancho, I’m really getting to like the reputation these county elections directors have. (Yeah, I know they all can’t be as professional as Bucher and Sancho, but these two are gems.)
dswagz
Funny thing about those fraudulent voter drives;
Seems the R’s are in the middle of all the fraudulent voter scandals.
He who smelt it dealt it.
…Why am I not surprised.
danielx
@nellcote:
Y’know, I’d thought Nathan Sproul was a common garden variety Republican scam artist…except that political scam artists are supposed to fuck up the other guys for profit, not their own side.
Now I’m starting to wonder if he’s secretly a Democratic operative.
This is clearly Obama’s fault.
LanceThruster
@Comrade Mary:
x2
LanceThruster
@ThresherK:
I think UR right.
Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaaah.
LanceThruster
@gbear:
Did you have her supply her address info for her George Soros check?
We know how to treat those who come over to the dark side.
Dennis SGMM
More proof that the Republican party has become crazier than a shithouse rat. They never stop to ask themselves why it is necessary for them to suppress the vote or to tamper with voter registrations. They just keep on doing it.
Of course, any Republican who asked “Do we have to do these things because our ideas are unpopular?” would be immediately drowned in a tsunami of Tea Party rage. They have put themselves on auto-fuck.
Suffern ACE
@aimai: Lol. NO one could have foreseen the drag of the Ryan plan…that made my day.
Palli
@dswagz:
and also behind the election ballot tabulation fraud and the few actual cases of voter fraud. (Coulter & Romney, to in fact)
Geeno
I think it’s obvious now that the Romney campaign is completely infested by people who saw Citizens United and the unlimited donations and said “I gotta get me some of that!”.
I don’t think any of them really care whether or nor Romney wins.
Violet
@trollhattan: Mitt said he wants Gene Hackman to play him. That would be delicious.
The Lodger
@Violet: Gene Hackman, no. Fred Willard, maybe.
Dennis SGMM
@Geeno:
It is a source of comfort and schadenfreude topped with whipped cream and chopped nuts to think of Romney being tooled by “the right kind of people”.
jibeaux
@Kay: hey, I think I’ll join!
RaflW
@feebog:
HaHahaha. Grifters gonna grift.
But then I also have this whole Dr. Evil vibe from these morans. “I’m going to dominate the elections…for One Million Dollars!”
The operatives don’t even know how to rip off the donors properly.
Renrph
@Lurking Canadian: sooooooo true!!
Matt McIrvin
Obviously ACORN has infiltrated the RNC!
THEY’RE IN THE AIR DUCTS!!