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Subscribe to RSSA campaign worker linked to a controversial Republican consulting firm has been arrested in Virginia and charged with throwing voter registration forms into a dumpster.
The suspect, Colin Small, 31, was described by a local law enforcement official as a "supervisor" in a Republican Party financed operation to register voters in Rockingham County in rural Virginia, a key swing state in the Nov. 6 election. He was arrested after a local business owner in the same Harrisonburg, Va., shopping center where the local GOP campaign headquarters is located spotted Small tossing a bag into the trash, according to a statement Thursday by the Rockingham County Sheriff’s office. The bag was later found to contain eight voter registration forms, it said. The arrest was reported Thursday night by WWBT-TV in Richmond.
Colin Small
The case comes on the heels of a controversy last month over the activities of Strategic Allied Consulting, an Arizona based consulting firm that was paid $3 million by the Republican National Committee this year to register voters in five battleground states, including Virginia. The firm, run by veteran GOP operative Nathan Sproul, was recently fired by the RNC following reports that its workers had submitted hundreds of suspicious voter registration forms in Florida.
Sean Spicer, communications director for the RNC, told NBC News Thursday night that Small has now been fired as well, and that he had been directly employed by a payroll company called Pinpoint, which was previously used by Strategic Allied Consulting to pay workers for the GOP registration drive being run by the consulting company.
Related: RNC cuts ties with firm over voter fraud allegations
Small lists himself on his LinkedIn resume as a “Grassroots field director at Republican National Committee” from August 2012 to the present. But Spicer denied that Small was ever directly employed by the RNC and said he will be “told to take that down.” Small was reportedly in jail Thursday night and could not be reached for comment.
Strategic Allied Consulting also tried to distance itself from the arrested campaign worker. “The relationship between Strategic Allied and Colin Small ended on September 27th, when our firm stopped running voter registration programs in Virginia and other states. We had no contact with Small or any other voter registration worker at any point thereafter,” a spokesman for the firm said in a statement emailed to NBC News. “The reprehensible conduct it appears Small engaged in happened nearly three weeks later. Strategic Allied had nothing to do with such regrettable, illegal activity. We hope he is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Spicer, the spokesman for the RNC, said that after the RNC and the Republican Party of Virginia severed their relationships with Strategic Allied Consulting, the state party continued to use some of the firm's same workers, including Small, by paying them through Pinpoint.
The Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd talks to NBC's Michael Isikoff about Florida voting fraud and what's being done about it now.
“The actions taken by this individual are a direct contradiction of both his training and explicit instructions given to him,” said Pat Mullins, the chairman of the Virginia Republican Party, in a statement Thursday night. “The Republican Party of Virginia will not tolerate any action by any person that could threaten the integrity of our electoral process."
The Rockingham County Sheriff’s office said that, after an investigation and "lengthy" consultations with local prosecutors, Small was arrested and charged with eight felony counts and four misdemeanors under Virginia voter fraud laws and one misdemeanor count of obstruction of justice. “There is no indication that this activity was widespread in our jurisdiction; it appears to be very limited in nature but there is the possibility that additional charges may be filed in the future if it is deemed appropriate,” said the statement from Rockingham County Sheriff Bryan Hutcheson.
It is not clear what motive Small might have had for throwing away the registration forms. Voters in Virginia do not register by party so there is no way to know whether the recovered registration forms were from Democratic or Republican voters. One GOP source said that a campaign worker could be tempted to throw away forms that have incomplete information since there are penalties under Virginia law for not submitting completed registration forms within 15 days after they are signed. It could not be determined Thursday night if the forms allegedly tossed by Small were incomplete.
Sproul’s companies have been accused by Democrats in the past of engaging in tactics aimed at suppressing voter turnout, including throwing away Democratic registration forms. Sproul has denied any wrongdoing and no charges against his companies have been filed. But authorities in Florida said they are conducting a statewide investigation of Strategic Allied’s operations there following reports of suspicious registration forms submitted by its workers, including forms with phony addresses and similar looking signatures. Sproul blamed the suspicious forms on a few “bad apples” who were working for him.
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TIME to start showinfg these guys we arent gonna allow them to continue to snub their noses at the people and steal from us while looking us in the eye. Come on police ..do your job..after all Mitt wants to get rid of your job you know.
Don't you libs get into voter fraud and disfranchised with the reps, your hands aren't clean. wis got caught, for suppression with the military vote. Ohio tried that stunt. as VA and other states. . so, stfu.
So you're saying that both sides do it so that's OK even though the cons do far more of it and to a further extreme. In other words you're claiming that if someone punches you then it should be legal for you to kill an innocent person.
didn't say that it "was Ok.' just saying that you dems whine more. when they got caught in wis. nothing. If the reps did that. oh boy. big-big news. get my drift. And another thing...when you dems say, "oh, what do we a need a voter ID for, trying to surpress the minorities. everyone has a right to vote. yes, to you libs, but again, when their is blantent surpression to the militarty vote, not word one. you bastards complained about ohio,that the military was going to get a few extra days. Oh, no way, not fair- not fair you scream. but, sure didn't hear you scream again with the military vote. and you know why? because they are going for romney this election cycle. and that could blow obama out of the park. and you libs know it.
Oh please! You sound like a four-year-old. Your whole comment was a whine. Both of them, in fact.
that is how you libs act. don't like it do ya?
No, you're more like a three-year-old.
You may carry on with your whine. You're dismissed!
Doc S,
Anyone who commits a crime needs to go to JAIL. People have died to protect your right to vote.
By the way, I'm an Independent who voted for a Republican Governor. I'm still an independent but I'm supporting Obama.
Doc S, what are you talking about, suppressing military vote?
I voted early, yesterday, and every one should do it as soon as passable. Even if you don't live in a State where the Republicans are trying to suppress the vote know that if they see it as working they might try your State next. It is crucial to show them that by trying to disenfranchise voters they actually inspire us to appreciate our rights and that will fight to keep them. Vote early and reward the Republicans for their efforts. Also who's to say YOUR registration didn't end up in a trash can? Vote now so if it did it can be fixed. If you wait to the last day it will be to late.
For all you Republicans screaming ACORN the difference is Acorn officials blew the whistle on what was going on and the Republican officials had to get caught to stop it.
Not to mention that ACORN was disbanded in March 2010.
Not to mention ACORN was exonerated.
The face of the Republican Party and their candidate.
trazmo/fala
Bush should have never won a second term !!! He and his party stole the election !
And they are trying to do it, AGAIN !!!
Most americans ARE democrats and that is a fact !
And most democrats are fools.
Brad, And most Republiclones are TOOLS! People hypeventillating about how GREAT they are, shortly after their FAVORITE president almost completely gutted our GREAT NATION. Where are all of the super comments about George Wonderful Bush during this election period. Was it possibly because he lied and deceived Our Nation into two wars causing the deaths and dismemberment of 100s of 1000s of people, including the 10s of 1000s of our brave military. I'll bet you're a Romney supporter who has never served your country?
Why would somebody at GOP headquarters throw away voter registration applications for Republican Voters
Me smells a Liberal turd in the punch bowl
danimly, Virginia doesn't register by party, that makes you the turd.
Reported and ignored, danimyl.
I've seen this type of thing in action in Virginia and it is one of the reasons I stopped working as a poll captain. GOP plays dirty, they always have and they always will; they whip people into a frenzy by playing on prejudices that whole fantasy of you are better than (fill in the blank) is their primary weapon and they use it with lethal force. The GOP has become the spokesperson for greed, elitism: rule by only the wealthiest; as long as there is a nickel to be made at the expense of someone with less affluence, they go for it. With the direction the current GOP has taken, we are headed back to poor houses and the majority of citizens becoming nothing more sefs under the ownership of some wealthy jerk. Keep the voting public uneducated, misinformed, angry at another group of people and you can count on a vote for the GOP. One day soon, the average American is going to be sitting on the street with no job, no health coverage, no rights and trying to figure out how it could have possibly happened. When our forefathers were fighting to create the United States, people holding opinions like those held by the GOP were the clear cut enemies of the revolution.
The Propaganda Machine is hard at work selling the need for Voter I.D.!
It's not a problem, and so we'll make it a problem, even if we have to do it ourself.
Let's just give away more of our liberties, and fingerprint everyone into a national database.
Maybe we should supply the government with DNA evidence to our true identity?
Are people really so stupid?
These aren't isolated incidents.... this election will have the most fraud EVER. The GOP is doing whatever they can or CAN'T get away with to steal this election. It's shameful....but they have no shame. ROMNEY is pure scum, the filth that builds up on the bottom of the bathtub. I can't wait until he losses and fades into history.
Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers have a lot of money invested in this hostile takeover, and they are going to protect it whatever it takes.
They are going to get their apologist CEO Willard installed no matter what, unless we all stand up for our country right now.
"We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate. Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become President of the United States.:
- Grover Norquist, the real head of the GOP
If it happened in 2004 and it's happening again in 2012, Republicans obviously don't care if the people they hire are legitimate... or maybe they set this whole thing up to begin with, hoping NOT to get caught?
It is not that they don't care if their people are legit. They KNOW they aren't. This is the last guy that got caught.
The man at the center of a voter-fraud investigation in Florida is a longtime GOP operative with a pugnacious streak and a controversial history among Republicans and Democrats for his aggressive tactics in registering voters.
Nathan Sproul is a businessman who rose rapidly in Arizona politics, heading the local Christian Coalition and the state Republican Party in his mid-20s. A series of voter-fraud allegations against him in 2004 did not slow his ascent: Sproul and firms linked to him have been paid $21.2 million by the Republican Party, its candidates and affiliated interest groups over the past nine years.
Guess what? He didn't work for ACORN!
Fraud is the real threat to voting, requiring that voters provide identification will do nothing for this fraud.
For anybody who did not read the entire article, in Viriginia voters do not register with a party. Smallshould not have been throwing the ballots out, but he had no way of knowing whether or not he was discarding Republican, Democrat or Independent voter ballots. This is a crime, but let's not make this out to be a huge deal and call the GOP cheaters - Dems conveniently want to forget Acorn - which was much worse than these 8 ballots Small discarded. Did anybody ask why they were discarded?? perhaps these people were not US Citizens or perhaps the applications were not complete. Anybody can fill them out, but it does not mean they are elligible to register! Educate yourself before you start going on rants about the GOP being cheaters!
forgot the New black panthers for voter intimidation. now, there is going to be ex seals at all voting booths to make sure that they-panthers don't have the opportunity for such crap. btw...no one will see them. incognito so to speak.
Disabled Voter... "Are people really so stupid?"
Evidently nearly half of the voters (on the right) in the US are and lets not leave out deaf and blind...
NBC's attempt to make a big deal out of nothing.
They jump all over something like this but ignore what happened in Benghazi where 4 Americans were killed.
Ya Wilson, the media ignored it...
Sheesh.
This is a crime. It is not nothing. I can see that you have issues with the law.
Thank you kkwilson. You are a great republican apologist.
In April, the project released an analysis comparing coverage of Romney's presidential campaign by the Free Press, the largest newspaper in Michigan, his native state, with coverage in the Boston Globe, the largest newspaper in Massachusetts, where Romney was governor from 2003-07. The software said about 37% of the Romney coverage in the Free Press was positive for the candidate, compared with just 18% in the Globe, with about half the reporting in each paper judged as neutral.
"Our data clearly show that if the mainstream media does have a liberal bias, that bias isn't manifesting itself in the current campaign," said Max Krieg, a 4th Estate analyst.
http://www.freep.com/article/20120812/COL32/308120231/Ron-Dzwonkowski-New-venture-debunks-notion-of-liberal-media-bias
If you believe this, you need to start watching the news, not just MSNBC.
You mean Fox 'news'?
Pathetic.
Karl Rove playbook. Chapter two.
The GOP, party of family values and Christian ethics, trying to rig an election? Surprise!
There is no Commandment: Thou shalt not rig elections!!!!
It's ok!!!!
the republican confederates have always been a trojan horse of deceit, once they get in bad things always happen and even though its right in front of the public there are those who pretend they don't see it. wonder why that is....
I hope no one is shocked that the GOP would do something like this! How else will they win? Also, is it okay for TAGG to threaten the President with a beating? Where is the Secret Service and FBI? If anyone else made a comment like this they would already be arrested. To say something like that is NOT a joke - it is a deep seeded feeling. Is this how Mitt the Twit and the Barbie Doll Mormons raise their sons and children? If you don't get what you want - eliminate them through violence!!!
Lets face the facts .....
If elected, that "Kenyan born Muslim socialist" will release satan from his prison and begin a 1000 years of darkness. Chuck Norris said so!
Whatever it takes to save mankind, the end always justifies the means. Even if we have to throw away the very core of American values by corrupting the voting rights of others. As long as we talk about the constitution, wave the flag and buy our guns, no one will be the wiser.
Do you get it now libby's? Conservatives are trying to save the world. Destroying American values and freedoms is a small price to pay to prevent certain biblical annihilation
nice sarcasm !
You had me worried for a minute there, Mike! Thanks, gofins!
</end sarcasm>
LOL @ the republican apologists.
Ha! Awesome post.
Its gonna be really funny to you haters, that if, the forms are shown to be incomplete, and the man was doing his job of destroying the forms (though I would have shreaded them), that all this is too much ado about nothing!
There may be very legitimate answers to this, yet here we go, blaming corruption, but ignoring all the "community activists" that do this crap as second nature.
Funny little double-standard that few have time for anymore!!
Do you liberals read anything at all. The media is working its spin machine 24/7 in the hopes of getting this idiot re-elected. In Virginia, NO party affiliation is on the voter registration cards; therefore, there was no way of knowing if the cards that were tossed were lib or GOP. Maybe the poor guy was just putting out the trash; oh that's what Romney's going to do.
Another paranoid heard from. Yes, the media is conspiring against you. Now go watch TV.
Blame the media again?
Been there done that. Try thinking of something new.
hey god; anyone with half a brain, or one not diluted by main-lining Kool Aid, can see the media is uttely & totally in the tank for Obama.
The witches on "The View" grilled Anne Romney the other day, but when Michelle Obama went on, nothing but softball, girl-talk. Disgusting!!
Oh, you used Kool-aid in a sentence! How clever of you!
I hope you're eating your heart out over this media conspiracy theory.
It's not a conspiracy. The media has been for years heavily biased to the liberal side. Romney went on CNN for a debate with disgustingly liberal moderator, who after opening her fat pie hole to answer a question on behalf of Obama, admitted the next day she was wrong.
I wonder if President Zippie would go on Fox for a debate, and let Michelle Malkin moderate.
You don't know what you are talking about.
http://www.freep.com/article/20120812/COL32/308120231/Ron-Dzwonkowski-New-venture-debunks-notion-of-liberal-media-bias
The bias from May to August actually showed pro-Romney media bias. It has been that way for a few years.
Poor forgetful (or ignorant) conservatives.
Liberal Media this, and Liberal Media that.
What you people need to know is that the term 'liberal media' was a strategy employed by the conservative right in an attempt to discredit journalistic reporting on right wing politics.
Which party has a news channel dedicated SOLELY to their cause?
What cause does Rush Limbaugh SOLELY support with his most popular radio talk show in America.
Give me a break with all this Liberal Media BS and find a new excuse for yourselves already.
Now we know why Republicans want to disenfranchise people for voter fraud, because they're guilty of it themselves.
The difference with Acorn, is they flagged any suspicious ballots and then turned them into the state registers office to validate (or not) since its the states, not Acorn, who issues the voter cards. if Acorn (or others) take 100 forms, they have to turn in 100 forms and they did, even if it said Mickey Mouse on them (of course Mickey Mouse wouldn't show up at a precinct and wouldn't be on the voters rolls, so it doesn't matter).
These republican voter fraud scumbags just throw away the forms they think are democrats, and that's why they are in trouble. Not to mention the other 47 cases, all republicans, of trying to suppress the vote with id laws, ending early voting, anything that affects democrats more than republicans. Shameful.
No one died in the Watergate lie!!
4 people pass as Obama covers his ass!!!
,,,,,,and now we're finding out that Chris Stevens may have had links to Al Queda, supplying arms to Syrian rebels.... Imagine how that would look to Obama?? His ambassador, giving arms to our sworn enemy!!! In other words,,,,,,Obama really is a Muslim-jihardist sympethizer..
Think what YOU did America,,,,,,7 years after 9/11, you placed a muslim sympethizer in the presidency, just cuz he was a "cool guy!"
Does it hurt, being that stupid?
wtf are you talking about planeguy- you are one sick puppy. A little off topic too I might add.
Go to "The Blaze.com"
If the new Libyan government was sending jihadists and 400 tons of lethal cargo to Syria through a port in southern Turkey—a deal brokered by Stevens’ primary Libyan contact during the Libyan revolution—then the governments of Turkey and the U.S. surely knew about it.
I would just say Go to blazes.