Voter registration fraud in Florida? State looking into suspicious forms in 9 counties

PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. - Just days after irregularities in 106 registration forms were discovered in Palm Beach County, the Florida Division of Law Enforcement is investigating hundreds of registration forms from at least nine counties.
 
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said more counties are expected to come forward with irregularities in registration forms.
 
Bucher said she had a conference call Monday morning with lawyers and Vicki Davis, the president of the State Association of Supervisor of Elections, about developing a statewide plan to tackle the problem.
 
The irregularities emerged when forms were submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in swing states.
 
The consulting company has since been fired and an investigation has started into many of the registration forms the firm submitted that allegedly have forged signatures.
 
Chris Cate, spokesman for the division of elections, said Lee, Clay, Santa Rosa, Charlotte, Escambia, Okaloosa, Miami-Dade and Duval have turned in suspicious voter registration forms to be investigated.
 
Pasco County's election supervisor has also noticed irregularities and is expected to turn in registration forms too, Cate said.
 
The exact plan of action to tackle the problem hasn't been taken.
 
Bucher said it could make it so elections officers will have to check changes to voter records within the past 60 to 65 days.
 
She said that's the time period Strategic Allied Consulting started gathering applications.
 
"It's about 60,000 records so we'll take a look and see what kind of changes were made and make sure that we make voter contact so that we're not changing something that the voter did not request," Bucher said.

It's work that may have to be done on top of other projects the department does to prepare for elections.
 
Bucher said this may cause county workers from other departments to come help check the voter records.
 
Strategic Allied Consulting defended their practices last Friday by telling NBC News that the fraud in Florida was caused by a bad apple.
 
Other reports have indicated that other states are looking into registration forms submitted by the consulting company as well.