On Tuesday, a Virginia judge dismissed eight felony counts against a Republican Party campaign worker who threw voter registration forms in a dumpster during the 2012 election cycle.
Colin Small, 23, still faces misdemeanor charges related to an incident in October, according to his lawyer, John Holloran of Harrisonburg, Va. Holloran reports that the felonies were thrown out during a preliminary hearing Tuesday.
Small, a field supervisor for Strategic Allied Consulting, allegedly threw away several voter registration cards because they were invalid. Upon closer examination, all were out of date and invalid. One turned out to be a convicted felon, and three were voters who were already registered. Holloran said all of the discarded voter registration forms were for the Republican Party.
“I think they charged it three days after the event and thought it was the tip of the iceberg and that there was this huge voter fraud conspiracy that was occurring,” Holloran said. But a grand jury investigation turned up no other evidence of fraud. The next hearing in the case is set for April 16.
Members of the Democratic Party still cry foul because of fraudulent activity by Small’s former employer, Strategic Allied Consulting. The was firm paid more than $3.5 million by the Republican National Committee (RNC) to register voters and perform get out the vote activities in eight swing states.
The company, owned by longtime Republican consultant Nathan Sproul, was fired by the RNC after charges of voter fraud surfaced in Florida. The allegations surfaced October 2012 after the Palm Beach County elections supervisor flagged 106 of the firm’s registration forms for having similar handwriting, incorrect addresses and incomplete information.
Since then, elections officials in nine Florida counties have unearthed hundreds of possibly fraudulent registration forms. Chris Cate, a spokesman for the Florida Department of State, commented at the time of the initial investigation saying, “We are concerned about any cases of voter fraud. In this case, it has to do with most allegations regarding bad information on voter applications.”
The company refuted these claims in a company posting October 2012, writing:
“Strategic Allied Consulting has never tolerated even minimal violations of election law when registering voters. Because of this commitment to zero tolerance, Strategic Allied Consulting has trained every one of our more than 4,000 contractors in proper voter registration procedures before they hit the street.” The firm and its affiliates claim to have registered “500,000 voters in 40-plus states.”
The allegations continued last month when two Strategic Allied workers admitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that they forged registration forms. The investigation into the forgeries is ongoing.