Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Banned!
Wal-Mart has banned a voter-registration group with Republican ties from their stores in Tennesee for "failing to meet the retailer's standards of nonpartisanship."
Duh, you think?!?
The Washington Post reports that Liberty Consultants has admitted to Wal-Mart officials they'd been hired by an Arizona firm "[h]eaded by Nathan Sproul, a former Christian Coalition activist."
Sproul & Associates was paid $7.9 million by the Republican National Committee for consulting and voter registration drives in the 2004 election cycle, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.Imagine that!
The group was setting up tables in GOP strongholds around Nashville and registering voters outside their stores. Dennis Alpert, a Wal-Mart spokesperson told the Post the group initially refused to leave and only grudgingly did so after the retailer threatened to call police.
Guess it's a new era now that good ol' Sam has left this world to meet his Maker.Liberty Consultants tried to have the Tennessee store ban overturned by calling officials at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.
"They questioned our decision on their request, stating that our policy allows for nonpartisan voter registration," Alpert said. "But our research indicated they did not fit our definition of nonpartisanship."
Alpern indicated that stores in California and Nevada were being alerted of Liberty Consultant's ties to Sproul and the GOP.
If you recall, Sproul's firm is the lovely company who went around the country registering only Republicans and throwing away the Democratic registration forms in battleground states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Nevada and Oregon.
// posted by Howling Latina @ 10:38 AM 
