Ed on the PBS documentary about the men competing for the presidency:  "I highly recommend you watch it. You will see a candidate who can change his convictions so easily because he has no true convictions."

David Siegel, multi-millionaire founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, sent a letter to his employees telling them that their job is at stake if Mitt Romney doesn't win.

Ed Schultz breaks down the letter and Siegel's history of using his employees to advance his own political agenda.

A Michigan CEO is giving his employees a little friendly advice: Vote Romney, or you'll end up paying for it.

In a letter to company workers, Richard Lacks, who runs auto parts supplier Lacks Enterprises, advised them to “vote to improve your standard of living” by opposing President Obama.

Obama's healthcare overhaul, Lacks claimed, would lead to higher health insurance costs for the firm. “As employees, you will receive no additional direct benefit other than you will have to pay for it,” he added.

Lacks continued: “The talk of additional tax increases by the administration, if re-elected, will have an additional negative impact on the organization. It is always important to remember the more government takes the less there will be available to spread around to the working people of this company."

The letter was leaked to MILive.com.

On The Ed Show Monday, Ed Schultz filled viewers in on the real kicker: In that same letter, Lacks informed employees they'd be getting their sixth bonus on 3 years. Though a company spokesman told MILive.com that the firm didn't benefit directly from the auto bailout pushed by the Obama administration and opposed by Romney, Ed noted that's not the full story. G.M. and Chrysler are among Lacks's top customers, and without the bailout, they might not exist today. So it's fair to say that Obama's bailout has played a pretty big role in the firm's success these last few years.

Social media election sentiment for Thursday, Oct. 4. Click the image for the full report.

The immediate consensus that Mitt Romney won Wednesday's presidential debate has eroded significantly as fact-checkers have weighed in and supporters of President Barack Obama have fought back, according to NBCPolitics' computer-assisted analysis of more than 1.3 million post-debate comments on social media.

M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

The analysis suggests that as debate over a news event continues unmediated over time, the impact of the conventional wisdom of journalists and partisan commentators can be mitigated.

Before the debate, Romney partisans — never shy about criticizing what many of them see as the news media's bias against Republicans — had predicted that Obama would be declared the "winner" regardless of how it unfolded:

Twitter.com — 8:55 p.m. ET Oct. 3

But as soon as the debate had finished Wednesday night, commentators and television analysts — including some generally considered sympathetic to Obama — agreed that the president had lost:

Twitter.com — 10:55 p.m. ET Oct. 3

As the consensus spread through the news cycle, it was echoed on Twitter and Facebook on Thursday, according to NBCPolitics' analysis, which examined slightly more than 1.3 million postings beginning at 10:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, when the debate concluded, through 11 a.m. ET Friday.

NBCPolitics.com uses a tool called ForSight, a data platform developed by Crimson Hexagon Inc., which many research and business organizations have adopted to gauge public opinion in new media. It isn't the same as traditional surveys, which seek to reflect national opinion; instead, it's a broad, non-predictive snapshot of what's being said by Americans who follow politics and are active on Facebook, Twitter or both at a particular moment in time, and why they're saying it.

More social media analysis from NBCPolitics.com

Explainer: Can you scientifically quantify social media opinion?

Obama took a beating Thursday, reflecting the view that he had been passive and had passed up opportunities to attack Romney:

Crimson Hexagon Inc. and NBCPolitics.com

Twitter.com — 10:40 p.m. ET Oct. 3

Twitter.com — 10:12 p.m. ET Oct. 3

A visual representation of the discussion in the 90 minutes immediately after the debate, as pundits chewed it over on TV postgame shows, indicates the breadth of consensus. Notice that even when people talked about Obama, one of the primary subtopics was "Romney Won The Debate":

Crimson Hexagon Inc. and NBCPolitics.com

Now look again. Even as Romney was being hailed as the victor in the minutes immediately afterward, a small question was already being raised about "Facts."

By late Thursday afternoon, those questions had become prominent, as commenters cited analyses by partisan and nonpartisan fact-checkers:

Crimson Hexagon Inc. and NBCPolitics.com

Particularly influential was a commentary Thursday morning by the liberal blog Think Progress:

Pundits from both sides of the aisle have lauded Mitt Romney's strong debate performance, praising his preparedness and ability to challenge President Obama's policies and accomplishments. But Romney only accomplished this goal by repeatedly misleading viewers. He spoke for 38 minutes of the 90 minute debate and told at least 27 myths.

Arguments like that planted the idea that Romney had "lied his way to victory," an idea that Obama supporters began spreading with enthusiasm:

Facebook.com — 7:24 a.m. Oct. 4

Twitter.com — 12:07 a.m. ET Oct. 4

By Friday morning, the counterargument that Obama had actually won on substance had taken root, with online sentiment now favoring the president:

Crimson Hexagon Inc. and NBCPolitics.com

A visual representation illustrates the shift:

Crimson Hexagon Inc. and NBCPolitics.com

Facebook.com — 6:20 a.m. Oct. 5

Facebook.com — 7:24 a.m. Oct. 5

The analysis suggests that Twitter and Facebook can be powerful disseminators of opinion once commenters have time to digest the news and marshal their arguments, as was efficiently perceived in this comment:

Twitter.com — 9:48 p.m. ET Oct. 4

The consensus is that Barack Obama turned in lackluster performance during last night debate with Mitt Romney.  But the president was back on stride today on the campaign trail with some zingers of his own.

First, Obama jumped on Romney's flip-flopping sales pitches on taxes, regulations, health care, education and Medicare, painting debate Romney an imposter.

"When I got on to the stage I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney," Obama told supporters in Denver this morning.  "But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year, promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn't know anything about that." 

Then, Obama came up with the perfect word to describe Romney's "same top-down economic policies that got us into this mess." 

"It's not change, it is a relapse," the president told supporters this afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin.  "And we're not going to do it!" 

Obama also made fun of Romney's threat to cut PBS to make a serious point.

"He'll get rid of regulations on Wall Street but he's going to crack down on Sesame Street!  Thank goodness somebody's finally cracking down on Big Bird! Who knew he was responsible for all these deficits. Elmo's gotta watch out!"

All good lines, but will Obama change his strategy for the debate?  

The campaign says yes.

The president "made a choice last night to answer the questions that were asked … and not get into serial fact-checking with Governor Romney," said senior strategist David Axelrod.  "We’re going to take a hard look at this and we’re going to have to make some judgments about where to draw the lines." 

In a low-key and often wonkish presidential debate on Wednesday, Mitt Romney distanced himself from his own plans, but received only intermittent push-back from a subdued President Obama.

Obama started out strong at the Denver debate, nipping at Mitt Romney for the Republican's tax plan, which would reportedly cut $5 trillion in tax revenue and add $2 trillion in military spending. Obama insisted the move would pulverize middle-class families or balloon the deficit.

"How we pay for that, reduce the deficit and make the investments that we need to make without dumping those costs on to middle-class Americans, I think is one of the central questions of the campaign," the president said.

Romney, however, insisted that he doesn't have a $5 trillion tax cut in his plan, and that he won't reduce the taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans. On the stump, Romney has pushed to lower everyone's tax rates by 20%, an amount independent groups say will reduce federal revenue by $5 trillion over the next decade.

Obama charged that for the past year-and-half, his opponent has been running on such a tax plan and now his "big, bold idea is 'never mind.'" 

On Medicare, Obama noted that although Romney's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system might not affect current seniors, it would affect those who'll soon be eligible for the program. "If you're 54 or 55, you might want to listen because this might affect you," he said.

Obama argued that Romney has yet to lay out concrete plans on taxes, healthcare and Wall Street reform. "And at some point I think the American people have to ask themselves is the reason that Governor Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they're too good?"

While there was no knockout moment, the tables seemed to turn in the GOPer's favor when Romney insisted the president's policies have stunted job growth and a second term in the White House for Obama would kill more jobs. He ripped Obama's plan to repeal tax cuts for small businesses and  referenced Vice President Joe Biden's gaffe this week, saying "Under the president's policies, middle-income Americans have been buried."

Romney, appearing poised and confident, argued that health insurance costs have gone up, gas prices have doubled, costs of food have skyrocketed and the middle class has been crushed under Obama.

"You raised taxes and you killed jobs," Romney declared.

Throughout most of the evening, Romney was the clear aggressor, seizing control of the debate at several moments and interrupting moderator Jim Lehrer, while the president often seemed somewhat listless as he looked down at his podium.

Richard Wolffe, executive editor of MSNBC.com, said the cards fell in Romney's favor, but that in the end, Romney may not have achieved everything he needed to.

"I think the GOP is going to be delighted with Romney because it's all small bore. They want him to rough up the President and he did. Sadly for the GOP, he missed the real target: telling voters what he really stands for. Especially about jobs," Wolffe wrote on MSNBC.com.
 
Romney's big push comes as polls show him behind in several battleground states.

Here is a transcript of Ed's first reaction to tonight's debate, speaking to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow:

"I was disappointed in the president.  The president - he had an opportunity tonight - he created a problem for himself on Social Security tonight, he agrees with Mitt Romney.  Everybody liberal in this country knows that Mitt Romney wants to privatize Social Security down the road and to do a deal with the devil on that would be a wrong thing to do.  I think the president created a big problem for him tonight - for himself.  I don't think he explained himself very well on the economy.  I thought he was off his game.  I was absolutely stunned tonight.  Rachel, you just mentioned about time -- the president needs to get in and fight for that time.  There's people out there that expect him to fight for that time."  

Later, Ed said this:

"I was in front of a crowd last night in Denver, Colorado, and I know that they're stunned, I can feel it.  I mean, the president tonight was disappointing when he allowed Mitt Romney to talk about $716 billion in Medicare and the president did not come out and explain it and go after it." 

Ed added:

"[Obama] was not properly prepared for this tonight.  He was afraid to call out Romney because he didn't want to look angry.  The fact is that he has faced obstruction - he was afraid to use that term tonight, he wouldn't go down that road.  He was afraid to use the Ryan plan as a manifest of what these people want to do to this country.  It was playing soft, I mean [Obama] was in prevent-defense big time."  

Who won tonight's debate?  Leave a comment and/or take our poll!

DENVER – Policy largely trumped “zingers” in the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as the two sparred on issues as varied as taxes and spending, entitlements, education and more.

Romney sought to cast himself as a capable and affable alternative to the sitting president and looked to establish himself as presidential in a major opportunity to reach voters in a side-by-side setting at the University of Denver. Hitting that mark was especially important for Republican presidential nominee, given the high expectations he had faced entering tonight’s forum, having trailed Obama in most polls before this event.

Michael Reynolds / AP

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney after the first presidential debate at the University of Denver, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2012, in Denver.

Obama, for his part, cast his Republican opponent as elusive in specifying just how he would cut taxes without adding to the national debt, or what form his own health care reforms would take. 

But neither candidate seemed to achieve any breakout moment, and two additional debates throughout October could prove more pivotal to the election’s outcome.

VOTE: Did the debate do anything to influence who you will support on Election Day?

Taxes and spending dominated the outset of the debate, as Obama and Romney battled largely over the details of Romney’s tax proposals, which call for an across-the-board, 20 percent reduction in each marginal tax rate. The Republican argues the cost of these would be offset by reducing deductions.

"My number one principle is there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit," Romney said.

Romney asserted his tax plan would spur job creation and help balance the budget, but the president insisted that these proposals simply do not add up.

Slideshow: On the campaign trail

Reuters, Getty Images

In the final push in the 2012 presidential election, candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama make their last appeals to voters.

Launch slideshow

"The fact is that if you are lowering the rates the way you described, governor, then it is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class," Obama said. "It's math. It's arithmetic."

With a few exceptions, both candidates largely avoided the snappy, practiced lines that sometimes come to define debates. Their discussion at many times overrode the objections of moderator Jim Lehrer, and some of the topics for debate had to be shortened or cut altogether to accommodate for the candidates’ long-windedness.

PhotoBlog: Over beers, laundry and straight razor shaves, Americans tune in to the presidential debate

In a time-honored debate tradition, both campaigns’ surrogates declared victory for their candidate of choice. But style for both Obama and Romney seemed as important of a factor as any specific answer. 

Romney entered the debate needing to make up ground versus Obama, and the matchup this evening offered voters their first chance to make a direct comparison between the two of them. The Republican nominee also sought to soften his tone in many respects, a bow toward the net-negative personal approval rating he suffers in many polls.

Truth Squad: The Denver debate

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters following the debate that the president’s long-windedness was “never going to be our strong suit,” and acknowledged that Romney had scored “style points.”

“This is a race to 270 electoral votes,” Messina said. “In states like Ohio and Virginia and Florida, Romney’s positions on tax cuts and Medicare are going to be real problems for him. And he doubled down on those all night.”

But Obama didn’t score a knockout punch against Romney, declining to employ the controversial video about the “47 percent” of Americans whose votes the GOP nominee had essentially dismissed. Obama declined to talk about Romney’s record at Bain Capital or the personal income tax rate paid by Romney – two major, effective lines of attack used by the Democratic campaign over the summer.

Romney also parried many of the president’s attacks by largely embracing the essence of many of Obama’s own policies – from health care to education and regulation – while emphasizing the areas in which the two of them differed.

Romney said he supports repealing the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law, but replacing it with an alternative of his own. He has said that about immigration, and defused a briar patch involving his and Obama’s similar health care plans by seizing upon process.

“I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together,” said Romney. “What you did instead was to push through a plan without a single Republican vote.”

Toward the end of the debate, Obama struck back by questioning whether Romney’s own promises were too good to be true.

“At some point, I think the American people have to ask themselves, is the reason that Gov. Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they're too good?” Obama asked.

The immediate fallout of the debate will be most quickly reflected in media cycles on Thursday and into the weekend, though it might take days’ worth of polling to identify whether tonight’s debate moved the needle.

Obama and Romney will next meet Oct. 16 for the second of three debates. Before then, Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan will debate next Thursday in Kentucky.

I suspect there were probably a few minutes late yesterday afternoon when Obama campaign officials felt a little nervous. It was the day before a big debate, which is nerve-racking enough, and all of a sudden, there's a flurry of attention -- prominent right-wing provocateurs claimed to have a controversial video of Obama making racially-charged remarks.

I also suspect, a few hours later, those same Obama campaign officials exhaled so loudly they could probably be heard outside the building. The new, explosive video that was going to change the election wasn't new, wasn't explosive, and wasn't even interesting.

The whole mess just reeked of desperation. At issue was a speech Obama delivered in 2007, as a presidential candidate, not at some secret fundraiser, but in front of a large audience at Hampton University. Reporters covered the speech, which wasn't seen as especially controversial, and all the major networks told the public about Obama's remarks at the time.

In other words, Drudge, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity formed a strange sort of triumvirate to hype a five-year-old video that everyone already knew about, and which doesn't include anything interesting anyway.

Perhaps my favorite part of this silliness came when Carlson proudly boasted to Hannity on the air last night, "People will say this has already been reported. Well, actually, it hasn't been reported. And I know because I reported on it the first time."

Let that quote roll around in your head for a minute.

I'm not even sure what it is, exactly, the right finds so noteworthy about the 2007 speech. Obama criticized the government's response to Katrina? His speech used a cadence Drudge found overtly racial? Obama mentioned his former pastor?

I was also amazed when I saw one conservative last night insist that Obama never speaks this way "in public" -- as if a presidential candidate speaking to a large audience with reporters and cameras on hand somehow counts as "private."

In the larger context, I'm also struck by the extent to which the president's more unhinged detractors seem to sincerely believe they'll defeat him with old videos. Conservatives are apparently convinced the key to crushing Obama is to overlook his performance in the White House, and focus instead on his tone and cherry-picked quotes from speeches he delivered before taking office.

I'm not sure whether to be annoyed (by the ugly, racially-charged tactics), insulted (they're treating Americans like fools), or feel sorry for them.

Early voting began in Ohio on Tuesday morning. Obama supporters camped out overnight at polling stations around the state, as part of state Democrats' "sleep out the vote" effort. Early turnout bodes well for the president because, as Ed Schultz pointed out on Tuesday's The Ed Show, "early voters tend to favor Democrats."

In Lucas County, in the north part of Ohio, turnout on the first day of early voting nearly doubled from 2008's numbers. Of Tuesday's 928 voters, 696 were Democrats, while only 40 were Republicans. The Obama campaign has 96 field offices in the state, while Romney's team has just 36.

Early voting tends to be hugely important in Ohio. In 2008, 30 percent of voters got in their ballots before Election Day. This year the number could total 40 percent, said Schultz. According to the auditor of Ohio's Johnson County, a whopping 55 percent of voters in that region voted early in the last presidential election. He says "demand for early ballots so far is up significantly from 2008," according to CNN.

Schultz cautioned against excessive optimism, however. "Beware: Michael Dukakis had the lead before the election in 1988," he said. "This is a long haul."

Iowa kicked off the presidential election yesterday, becoming the first state where voters could cast their votes in person for the general election.

27 states and Washington, D.C., will have early in-person voting prior to Election Day.  The campaigns estimate that two out of every five ballots will be filled out before November 6, Election Day.

And one presidential candidate is in much better position to take advantage of the new voting in this dynamic thing we call American democracy.

Here's a look at Mitt Romney's field offices in Iowa. The Romney camp has 12 outposts across the Hawkeye State:

Now take a look at President Obama's operation, his field operation in Iowa.  The Obama campaign has 66 of these outpost offices, a 5.5-1 advantage over Romney:

These field offices are the lifeblood of presidential campaigns. This is where campaigns stage their “get out the vote” efforts and organize volunteers.

It's rather stunning for Mitt Romney to be so under-prepared to fight in the ground game in Iowa. He`s had the same problems as the primary candidate. Romney only started making frequent appearances in the state a week before the Iowa caucuses. By then, it was too late. And he lost a tight race.

Romney's campaign should have refocused their efforts, but instead, they find themselves in a huge disadvantage, as the first ballots were cast yesterday.

Here's the complete early in-person voting schedule:

Sept. 27 - Iowa & Wyoming

Oct. 1 - Nebraska

Oct. 2 - Ohio

Oct. 8 - California

Oct. 9 - Indiana

Oct. 11 - Arizona

Oct. 15 - Georgia

Oct. 17 - Kansas & Tennessee

Oct. 18 - North Carolina

Oct. 20 - Nevada & New Mexico

Oct. 22 - Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, North Dakota, Colorado, Washington dc, Texas, Wisconsin

Oct. 23 - Utah, Hawaii, Louisiana

Oct. 24 - West Virginia

Oct. 27 - Maryland & Florida

Nov. 2 - Oklahoma 

Updated:  8:46p.m. ET:  Election officials in six Florida counties are investigating what appears to be "hundreds” of cases of suspected voter fraud by a GOP consulting firm that has been paid nearly $3 million by the Republican National Committee to register Republican voters in five key battleground states, state officials tell NBC. 

But the veteran GOP consultant, Nathan Sproul, who runs the firm, strongly defended his company's conduct, saying it has rigorous "quality controls" and blamed the alleged fraud on the actions of a few "bad apples," workers who were hired to register Republican voters for $12 an hour and then tried to "cheat the system." 

The allegations of suspected voter fraud committed by Strategic Allied Consulting of Tempe, Arizona spread Thursday to counties throughout Florida. At the same time, the Republican National Committee said it had severed its ties to the firm altogether.

"We have heard from supervisors in six counties that they have irregularities in voter registration," said Chris Cate, spokesman for the Florida Department of State, which oversees the state's division of elections.  Although local prosecutors are already investigating the firm's conduct, Cate said state officials were also considering turning the matter over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to determine if there was a pattern of misconduct.  

The suspected fraud included apparent cases of dead people being registered as Republican voters, said Paul Lux, the supervisor of elections in Okaloosa County and a Republican. He compared the suspected fraud to the alleged acts of ACORN, the liberal activist group that became the center of a national controversy several years ago.

"It's kind of ironic that the dead people they accused Acorn of registering are now being done by the RPOF" [Republican Party of Florida], Lux said in an interview with NBC News.

In addition to Palm Beach County, where election officials initially reported 106 instances of suspected fraudulent registration forms, officials in Okaloosa, Pasco, Santa Rosa, Lee and Clay counties have also reported instances of possible fraudulent forms submitted by the firm, officials said.

In a statement on Strategic Allied's website, the firm's lawyer said:

"Strategic has a zero tolerance policy for breaking the law. Accordingly, once we learned of the irregularities in Palm Beach County, we were able to trace all questionable cards to one individual and immediately terminated our working relationship with the individual in question. Strategic is committed to following the letter of the law and will continue to cooperate with the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections to ensure that this issue is resolved."

Sproul said in a telephone interview that his company has employed between 4,000 and 5,000 people to register Republican voters under its contract with the RNC, including over 2,000 in Florida. The employees are given training on how to register voters, including being required to watch a video instructing them not to register felons. The video also instructs recruiters not to "modify or falsify voter registration forms."

"No matter what quality controls you have there are always going to be bad actors in any large scale operation," Sproul said.

Sproul, who has long worked for the GOP, also criticized Florida and national Republican officials for dumping him.

"They're trying to get the distraction behind them," he said about the RNC's action. 

Sean Spicer, communications director for the RNC, said Strategic Allied Consulting had been retained by the RNC and state Republican parties to register new Republican voters in five key battleground states.

But Spicer said that the party's relationship with the firm-- which has been paid $2.9 million by the RNC so far this year, according to federal elections records -- has now been terminated in light of alleged voter fraud linked to one of the firm's employees that was reported this week to Florida prosecutors by election officials in Palm Beach County. 

"We've made it clear we're not doing business with these guys anymore," said Spicer.  "We've come out pretty strong against this kind of stuff -- and we have zero tolerance for this."

Strategic Allied’s parent firm, Lincoln Strategy Group, also headed by Sproul, has been paid about $80,000 by the Romney campaign to conduct "field consulting," according to election records. Asked for comment, Sarah Pompei, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign, said by email:  "We used this vendor for signature gathering services during the primary but have not used them since 2011."

Besides Florida, Strategic Allied Consulting was hired to register GOP voters in Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia. Spicer said it was the only firm hired by the RNC to conduct voter registration. In the case of Nevada, he said, the RNC was paying the firm directly. In the other four states, the firm was being paid by state parties with the funds reimbursed by the RNC. 

The allegations involving voter fraud by the GOP consulting firm are a new twist in the national controversy over the threat posed by voter fraud and the impact of new state laws passed by Republican controlled legislatures to combat it. While Republican officials have repeatedly accused Democratic groups such as ACORN of fraudulently registering voters in the past, the new dispute over what happened in Palm Beach--  involving the registration of Republican voters -- appears to be one of the first to have led to a criminal inquiry in this year's election.

Christine Weiss, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office, told NBC News Thursday that the alleged voter fraud by a Strategic Allied Consulting employee is "currently being investigated" by prosecutors in her office after it was brought to the attention of prosecutors on Monday by Palm Beach election supervisor Susan Bucher.

Out of 304 Republican voter registration forms recently dropped off by a Strategic Allied employee at a small "satellite office" of the Palm Beach  elections office, 106 were flagged as potentially fraudulent-- including "a lot" with "similar looking" signatures and others with apparently phony addresses, Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach elections supervisor, said in an interview.

Among the suspect home addresses were those that matched a gas station in Miami, a medical building in Boca Raton and a Land Rover automotive dealership in Palm Beach County, she told NBC News.

Bucher said she called in the political director for the Palm Beach Republican Party and the GOP official agreed that the registration forms were a problem. She then took the forms to the Palm Beach County State's Attorney's office on Monday and requested the investigation.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Mike Grissom, executive director of the Florida Republican Party, said: "When we learned today about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida."

Sproul has been previously accused of suppressing Democratic voter turnout, throwing away registration forms, and manipulating ballot initiatives. His firms -- formerly Sproul & Associates, Lincoln Strategy, and Strategic Allied Consultants -- had previously worked for RNC voter registration efforts during the campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain. In 2004, Democratic Senators Leahy and Kennedy sent a letter to then Attorney General John Ashcroft requesting that he "launch an immediate investigation into the activities of Mr. Sproul and his firm." But the request did not lead to any criminal charges against Sproul.