On her show Monday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained why the Republican Party had halted its voter registration efforts in five major swing states.

Republicans had hired Strategic Allied Consulting to run voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada. But RNC severed ties with Strategic Allied Consulting last week after Florida officials traced possibly fake registration forms back to the company. The firm has also been accused of tearing up Democratic registration forms.

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“The actually worrying thing in voter registration fraud is if you do get real people to fill out real voter registration forms and they therefore believe they are registered and then because you don’t like their party affiliation, you tear it up and then that real person thinks they have registered,” Maddow explained. “They show up on election day only to find out they are not on the rolls and not allowed to vote.”

Strategic Allied Consulting was the only firm hired by the Republican National Convention (RNC) to run voter registration drives in those states. With many voter registration deadlines quickly approaching, Republicans have little chance to restart the registration drives.

“And the collapse of the Republicans’ voter registration scheme has resulted in the Republican Party ceasing all voter registration efforts in five of the swingiest swing states in the country with another week and a half left to register voters,” Maddow said.

Maddow’s guest, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, noted that conservatives were furious after the organization ACORN was accused of registering fake voters.

“ACORN itself, by the way, had called the attention of voter registrars to the fraud themselves, they disciplined themselves. And yet this was a big scandal and ACORN lost a lot of money and had to go out of business. Why isn’t this the same thing for conservatives?” he wondered.

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