LOD: Strategic Blunder

Greg Flynn, ace investigator and blogger, uncovered the North Carolina ties of a well-connected voter registration outfit caught cheating in Florida. His work adds considerably depth to the unfolding story of Nathan Sproul’s Strategic Allied Consulting firm which, until last month, held multi-million-dollar contracts to conduct voter registrations drives for the Republican National Committee and state parties in several swing states. The irony of the party screaming about voter fraud itself being caught committing registration fraud is not lost on reports in the media – see, for example, reports from the Charlotte Observer, WRAL-TV and WSOC-TV. The NC State Board of Elections has found some phony registrations turned in by the group, but it’s important to recognize that phantom people are not voting, existing safeguards are basically working, and elections officials uncovered the problem through their due diligence. Meanwhile, a new poll from WRAL-TV shows that a photo ID requirement is still widely popular with North Carolinians, even though it would do little to address the rare types of fraud that happen and do plenty to silence honest Americans who have a constitutional right to vote.