The Republican National Committee has terminated its relationship with Strategic Allied Consulting, a firm run by longtime GOP consultant Nathan Sproul that is currently under investigation for possible voter fraud in three Florida counties.
The RNC had paid the firm $2.9 million this year to conduct voter registration drives in five swing states -- Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia.
NBC News reports:
The move came after the Palm Beach County, Fla., elections supervisor discovered 108 potentially fraudulent registration forms submitted by the GOP consulting firm, including suspected phony signatures and home addresses that matched those of a gas station, a medical building and a Land Rover dealership.
NBC News has learned that two other Florida counties, Santa Rosa and Okaloosa, have also reported possible fraudulent registration forms submitted by the firm, including apparent dead people being registered as new voters. Prosecutors in two counties are investigating possible voter fraud by the GOP consulting firm, officials said.
NBC also notes that Mitt Romney's campaign paid approximately $80,000 to Lincoln Strategy Group, another firm run by Sproul, for "field consulting." Sarah Pompei, a spokeswoman for the campaign, sought to distance Romney's team from the company, telling NBC, "We used this vendor for signature gathering services during the primary but have not used them since 2011."
But what could cause trouble are news reports from 2012 linking Sproul to the campaign. An Associated Press report quoted him in February as "an Arizona political consultant who is working for Romney's campaign."
Additionally, Federal Election Commission filings show that the Romney campaign made two payments totaling $889.44 for "Rent & Utilities" to Lincoln Strategy Group in March 2012.
A Romney campaign spokesperson told The Huffington Post that this year the campaign used the firm only for office space and paid it accordingly. When asked to comment on Sproul's reported role as a political consultant to the campaign, the spokesperson insisted that the campaign has not used the "vendor" since 2011.
This is not the first time Sproul has been linked to voter fraud allegations. He has been accused of tampering with Democratic voter registration forms over several election cycles across multiple states.
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