RALEIGH, N.C. — The
North Carolina Republican Party has fired a company paid to register
new voters after fraudulent forms linked to the company were uncovered
in Florida. North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood said Monday
the party had terminated its relationship with Virginia-based Strategic
Allied Consulting, a private company paid more than $3 million to
register voters in at least seven presidential battleground states. "We take any threat to the voting process very seriously," Lockwood said.

The
State Board of Elections is also alerting county elections officials to
scrutinize all new voter registrations because of fraud concerns.So
far, six suspect registrations have been found, all in Mecklenburg
County, said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the state elections
board. Five came from Strategic Allied workers, and one was from a
Democratic voter registration group, he said.If there's any evidence of fraud, Bartlett said, the elections board will hand it over for criminal investigation.

The
moves come after Florida prosecutors began reviewing more than 100
suspect forms submitted by the company's employees in several counties.












The issue has become political baggage for Republicans, who
have championed new laws requiring voters to present a government-issued
photo ID to combat voter fraud they claimed had been perpetrated by
left-leaning groups. Critics of the new GOP backed voter-ID laws
point out that prosecutions for fraud are rare. They suggest the push is
more about keeping poor and elderly voters, considered less likely to
have a driver's license and more likely to vote Democratic, away from
the polls. Voter ID legislation passed North Carolina's
Republican-controlled legislature in 2011, but was vetoed by the state's
Democratic governor. Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the
North Carolina elections board, said problems sometimes arise with forms
collected by people paid to register as many voters as possible. "If you use volunteers, there's nothing to gain financially by creating fictitious registrations," she said.

Strategic
Allied Consulting said in a prepared statement that it and affiliated
companies had registered more than 500,000 voters in years of
conservative grass-roots campaigns carried out in 40 states. The
company called recent statements by GOP officials "libelous" and claimed
that the problems in Florida were caused by a single rogue employee. "Strategic has a zero-tolerance policy for breaking the law," said Fred Petti, a company attorney.