The Republican National Committee ended efforts to sign up new voters before the deadline in key states for the presidential race because of questions raised over registration applications tied to the party.
Republican parties in Florida, Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia — all states that both campaigns view as competitive — fired Glen Allen, Virginia-based Strategic Allied Consulting, the company in charge of registrations, said Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. The national committee also canceled its contract with the company, its only vendor signing up new voters, Kukowski said.
The five states have registration deadlines from Oct. 6 to Oct. 15. Stopping efforts before then could hurt Republican nominee Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat Democratic President Barack Obama, said Lance deHaven-Smith, a Florida State University political science professor in Tallahassee.
“In any swing state that’s going to be significant because these elections are so close,” deHaven-Smith said. “This gives an advantage to Obama.”
For their part, Republicans say this won’t hurt their chances at all, because coincidence is on their side. “It was wrapping up at the same time this happened, so there is no impact,” Kukowski told Bloomberg in an e-mail. That’s almost certainly BS, they’d keep registering voters until the last day they legally could.
It’s nice to see Republican cheating come back to bite them in the ass. They were trying to gain an unfair advantage against Democrats through trickery and fraud. The result: a disadvantage in several swing states in an election projected to be close. You really don’t often see irony and poetic justice this clearly outside of reruns of The Twilight Zone.
