Arizona / West

Oregon is probing new voter sign-ups

PORTLAND, Ore. - Oregon officials have opened an investigation into alleged improper voter registration practices, Secretary of State Bill Bradbury said Wednesday. The investigation comes one day after the deadline to register to vote, in a year when Oregon voter numbers are expected to be up substantially from the 2000 presidential election. And it comes on the heels of a television report in which a paid-per-registration canvasser said he had been instructed only to accept registrations from Republicans, and that he "might" destroy those from Democrats. It was not immediately clear which group that canvasser was employed by. Bradbury said the investigation would be based not only on the KGW-TV report, but also on other complaints that have not yet been made public. He wouldn't give details on the other allegations, but said complaints have also come from outside the Portland metro area. In Roseburg, Douglas County Clerk Barbara Nielsen said she had received a complaint from voters who said canvassers working for a Chandler, Ariz.-based consulting firm called Sproul & Associates had tried to push them into registering as Republicans, saying otherwise the canvassers wouldn't get paid for their efforts. Additionally, Nielsen said she had gotten calls from voters who refused to give their names, but said that canvassers from the same group had implied that their cards wouldn't be turned in if they registered as Democrats. Sproul & Associates is run by Nathan Sproul, a former head of the Republican Party in Arizona who has subcontracted with the Republican National Committee to do voter outreach efforts. Reached in Arizona, Sproul told The Associated Press that "we registered anyone who wanted to register." A spokesman for the Republican National Committee issued a statement Wednesday that said its party has "a zero-tolerance policy for anything that smacks of impropriety in registering voters." It is not yet clear whether any voter fraud in Oregon might be tied to similar allegations of Sproul & Associates voter fraud in Nevada, where authorities said Wednesday that they were "looking into whether any state or federal laws were violated." There were reports that Democratic forms were shredded in Nevada, but Sproul denied any shredding occurred.