You can't teach an old dog new tricks, and you can't expect corrupt, powerhungry people to change their cheating ways. As I said on Wednesday, Republicans are back to their usual game-playing with voter registrations, using their favorite likely fraudster Nathan Sproul. But since that report, the playing field has expanded significantly.

Lee Fang reports for The Nation:

I found a few more payments, like this one from the Colorado Republican Committee: $140,000 to the Sproul-connected firm on July 6, 2012. (UPDATE: I also found the California Republican Party making $430,840 in payments to "Grassroots Outreach, LLC" this cycle for voter registration. According to this disclosure, Grassroots Outreach shares the same address as Sproul's office in Tempe, Arizona. Craigslist job postings in California andColorado use identical language as Strategic Alled Consulting's listings in North Carolina.)

Those ads look like the one at the top of the page. They also look just like the ads run in 2008, and again in 2010, by the same firm. Here's Keith Olbermann reporting on them on October 21, 2008:

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This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. For months the California Republican Party has been paying professional petition gatherers to get enough signatures to put up a ballot initiative to repeal AB 32, California's climate change legislation passed in 2006. At the eleventh hour, they succeeded.

Now that they've succeeded, huge contributions are flowing into California to make sure the measure passes. In the name of "corporate speech", Tesoro has contributed $500,000, Occidental Petroleum $300,000 and Valero Energy has contributed $1,000,000.

Those are the ones we know about. Then there's the "Adam Smith Foundation."

The Adam Smith Foundation is a Missouri 501(c)(4) organization. It was organized in 2007. The Board of Directors is a fairly unknown bunch: Kurt Killen, William Clark Hardin IV, and John Elliott.

John Elliott is a mid-level player and associate of former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. Matt Blunt is the son of Rep. Roy Blunt, who is closely linked to Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, and the rest of the Republican graft gang. Were it not for the Abramoff connection, Roy Blunt would be sitting in John Boehner's minority leader seat today.

William Clark Hardin IV is another director. You can read more about him here.

And then there's Kurt Killen. He's the one who is most interesting to me. Kurt Killen served in 2003-2004 as an officer of the Missouri Republican Party. Mainstream, straight up Republican who loves Boy Scouts, libraries and...Rep. Sam Graves, at least enough to donate to him. In fact, Graves is the only candidate I see any donations going to from Killen in 2008-2010. Sam Graves is an interesting fellow. He also has ties back to Abramoff and his Gang of College Republicans. Major donors include the Busch family, Tony Rudy (the convicted Abramoff crony), and Sheldon Adelson. Oh, and Kurt Killen has been a member of the Citizens Club for Growth since 2004.

In 2010, Sam Graves has received four times as much in campaign contributions from corporate PACs as he has from individual donors. But the donor who caught my eye is KochPAC.

To review, we have a 501(c)(4) organization incorporated in Missouri. Its stated purpose is to "promote conservative principles and individual liberties in Missouri." (2008 990 filing) On December 31, 2008, its net assets were $5,300 and 2008 contributions were $30,000. In April, 2010 this same organization cut a check for $498,000.00 to fight a California Ballot Initiative.

One of the directors is a member of the Club for Growth and other directors have ties back to the Missouri Blunt machine, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and KochPAC.

Who do YOU think wrote the check? Here are your choices:

1. Club for Growth
2. Koch Industries
3. Citizens United
4. All of the above

And even more ties that bind...here.

Mark Jacoby aka Star Petition Services is still going strong here in California, and he's operating in a fashion true to the form that got him a smack on the wrist and 30 days of CalTrans service last year, but he's not the only one. Why isn't anyone outraged about this?

Since I first wrote about Jacoby and his bogus voter slamming, the Orange County Register has gone digging. Guess what they found? Yep, more evidence of a focused effort to use the petition to add a marijuana legalization initiative as a pathway to add more voters to Republican Party rolls.

Since mid-March, at least 99 written complaints have been submitted to state elections officials by Orange County residents who say they were registered to vote Republican without their consent. The Register found an additional 74 voters who said they were duped or coerced into registering to vote as a Republican by signature gatherers who initially asked them to sign petitions for causes like legalizing marijuana, fighting cancer or cleaning up beaches.

California Democrats are calling on the US Attorney to investigate, as they should. The very same people who demonized ACORN and accused them of voter fraud are the ones actually committing voter fraud for $8 bucks per registration.

Their scheme is pretty simple. They approach people about to enter a WalMart or Target store and ask them to sign a petition to put the marijuana legalization measure on the ballot. When someone agrees to sign the petition, they also ask them to fill out a voter registration card just to make sure their current address is correct in Sacramento. What they fail to disclose, and what most people don't notice, is that they've just signed a card changing their party affiliation to the Republican party.

From December 2009 through March 2010, the California Republican Party paid Grassroots Outreach, LLC nearly $675,000 for "voter registration services".

Who is Grassroots Outreach, LLC?

The California Corporations database indicates that Grassroots Outreach, LLC: established in California on June 11, 2008 via a third-party registration agent, C T Corporation System. C T Corporation System is also the agent for legal process. The registered address is 1232 Q St., Sacramento, CA 95811. The third-party registrant leaves the true ownership in question, but follow along with me anyway.

Nathan Sproul, a Republican political operative with a long and storied history of voter suppression and voter fraud accusations, has an Arizona company called Sproul Grassroots Mobilization, LLC. The mailing address is 80 E Rio Salado Pkwy #814, Tempe, AZ.

On June 18, 2009 the Golden State Voter Registration Project paid $50,000 to Grassroots Outreach, LLC. The address on the check was 80 E. Rio Salado Parkway, Suite 814, Tempe, AZ 85281, and the stated purpose for the payment was "voter registration services." The reported mailing address is Nathan Sproul's office, and the registered address for Sproul Grassroots Mobilization, LLC. (More on the Golden State Voter Registration Project donors and expenses here.)

The mailing address for the California payment to Grassroots Mobilization LLC is 1317 N. San Fernando Blvd, #175, Burbank, CA 91504. That address is a Pak-N-Ship store with a post office box rental service. The main offices of the California Republican Party are located about six blocks down at 1903 W. Magnolia Blvd, Burbank, CA 91506.

If we had access to corporate records, I'd be willing to bet we could draw a straight, clear, unquestionable line between Star Petition Services and Grassroots Outreach, LLC. After all, Jacoby and Sproul have a long history of doing business together.

California's politics are being run off the rail by this kind of activity. The initiative process is completely broken because Republicans are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put signatures they bought on ballot initiative petitions and voter registration cards. We seriously cannot afford to let this go unnoticed if we ever hope to have elections that truly are fair and free.

California is not Iraq. The United States is not Afghanistan. We either stand for clean, fair elections where one vote counts as one vote, or we let this kind of activity suppress the vote and the will of the people. I guarantee you this much: If it's going on here, it's ramping up nationwide.

It's really past time for us to take our country back. Why isn't the media breaking this news like it matters? It's the core of our democracy.

Remember October, 2008? Remember how McCain and Palin went all shrilly over ACORN allegedly fraudulently registering voters before they didn't? The only thing that stopped them (not that it stopped the shrilly teabaggers and Republicans later) was the arrest of Mark Jacoby on October 20, 2008. He was arrested for fraud and perjury, pled guilty on June 16, 2009 to voter-registration fraud and is now serving 3 years probation. Sort of. Actually, not so much.

Keith Olbermann's report in the video above and Nicole Belle's post on Mr. Jacoby and his connections to the John McCain campaign, Steve Poizner, and Nathan Sproul are worth reviewing for some background on how the Republicans turned up the noise on ACORN while actually engaging in voter fraud here in California. For all the heat Republicans put on ACORN, the only actual voter fraud conviction was Mark Jacoby's. He was sentenced to 30 days of Cal-Trans work and 3 years probation.

While detangling the finances of the California Republican Party I ran into Jacoby again, apparently doing business as Star Petition Services.

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Digby: "If the California Republican Party has its way, it could soon be Governor Mel Gibson,...read on"

I do know there are many people who are not happy that Mel is developing a nonfiction mini-series about the Holocaust.