For many years, Arizona politics have been uniquely corrupt and ugly. Arizona is, after all, home to the finger-wagging Governor Brewer, SB 1070 sponsor Russell Pearce, and birther Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It seems that Teapublicans in the state compete with one another to see who could come up with the next dirty trick.
So its no surprise that, when a new Teapublican voter fraud scheme came to light, it was led by an Arizonan.
Nathan Sproul is the former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition and the Arizona Republican Party. He is also the founder of Lincoln Strategy Group which has been tied to widespread efforts to suppress Democratic votes by shredding registration forms and other dirty tricks. Naturally, the GOP felt that qualified Sproul to help them defeat President Obama.
They paid Sproul $3 million to register GOP voters in battleground states for this years elections. But, in order to distance themselves from Sprouls past problems, they asked him to set up shell corporations to hide his involvement.
It didnt work.
Sprouls new firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, now faces allegations of voter fraud in at least five swing states. It appears his company was registering dead people to vote as Republicans.
What makes this incident so embarrassing for the GOP is that Sproul was caught doing what Teapublicans accused ACORN of doing – only none of the accusations against ACORN stood up to scrutiny. It also flies in the face of the GOPs claims that their voter ID laws in battleground states are intended to prevent voter fraud.
Once these new accusations were made public, the GOP immediately distanced itself from Sproul, acting swiftly and boldly according to RNC spokesman Sean Spicer. They claim that they have a zero tolerance for voter fraud unless, of course, it benefits a Teapublican candidate.