The scandal broke several weeks ago in south Florida’s Palm Beach County where the supervisor of elections set off a statewide probe after discovering questionable forms coming from Strategic Allied Consulting, an Arizona-based firm. The Republican National Committee (RNC) has paid Strategic Allied Consulting $3 million to register new voters in several states, according to news reports, and Florida’s GOP has doled out an additional $1.3 million.

Now the number of counties in Florida, a key battleground state, that have reported questionable voter registration forms connected to the consulting firm has grown to 10. The tainted forms include discrepancies in addresses, signatures and other identifying information. The scandal has led the RNC and several of its state chapters to fire Strategic Allied Consulting, which is under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

One of Florida’s largest newspapers went so far as to compare this to the rampant, nationwide voter registration fraud caused by the “community group” ACORN during the 2008 presidential election (read all about that in a Judicial Watch special report). “Remember all that talk from Republicans about voter fraud?  Well, it ain’t just for ACORN anymore,” the paper’s political reporter writes in a story published over the weekend. .   

Though any allegation of voter fraud is serious and must be thoroughly investigated by authorities, it seems a bit premature to compare this to the massive ACORN scandal that rocked the last presidential election. Seventy ACORN employees in 12 states have been convicted of voter registration fraud and a congressional report revealed that more than one-third of the 1.3 million registrants submitted by the group in the 2008 election cycle were invalid.

Whether the fraud is tied to Republicans or Democrats, Judicial Watch is monitoring this closely through its 2012 Election Integrity Project to assure that voter rolls are as clean as required by federal law. Through publicly available data, JW has already discovered that voter rolls in several states—including Mississippi, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, Florida, Alabama, California and Colorado—contain the names of individuals who are not eligible to vote.

The recent payout was discovered in the course of Judicial Watch’s ongoing investigation of the Obama-tied community organization that operated fraudulent voter registration drives during the 2008 presidential campaign. Last year JW published a special report (“The Rebranding of ACORN”) outlining ACORN’s illegal activities, including its involvement in the housing market meltdown.

ACORN members also embezzled at least  $5 million under the helm of founder Wade Rathke and his brother, Dale Rathke, the group’s former chief financial officer. In fact, Dale got busted for stealing $1 million from ACORN in 2000 and the money came mostly from the nonprofit’s in-house retirement fund, known as the ACORN Beneficial Association (ABA). ACORN executives kept the crime from board members and law enforcement, according to media reports.

Last month the ABA liquidated and distributed more than $10 million in assets to ACORN veterans and union organizers, JW’s probe found. ACORN founder Wade Rathke actually brags about it on his blog, where he writes: “For some of the people who I hired in the early 70’s who logged in 10, 20, and even 30 years working with me, these transfers are serious money in the six figures. A couple of my long time union organizers with Local 100 are looking at enough money to think about trying to buy houses for the first time, retire debts, and put aside savings.” 

This is a disgrace considering that, despite a myriad of legal scandals, ACORN for years enjoyed a huge flow of taxpayer dollars to promote its various leftwing causes. Congress could no longer ignore the issue and finally passed a law in 2009 banning federal funding for the Chicago-based community activist organization. The measure specifically prohibits any federal contract, grant, cooperative agreement or other form of agreement from being awarded to any ACORN affiliate or associate.

The Obama Administration has still managed to slip its various spinoffs some cash, however. Last year JW uncovered documents that show an ACORN reincarnation called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA) got a $79,819 grant to “combat housing and lending discrimination.” The money came via the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of a $40 million effort to educate the public and combat discrimination.

Known as an advocate of education equality for poor minorities, Democrat Shirley Huntley got hauled away in handcuffs last week and slapped with a 20-count indictment that includes felonies such as tampering with evidence and falsifying business records. Huntley stole nearly $30,000 she steered to a fake charity that claimed to help poor parents navigate the city’s school system, according to the indictment.

The 74-year-old state senator named her sham nonprofit Parent Workshop, according to the New York Attorney General’s office.  The fake charity claimed to help low-income folks deal with the city’s huge and complicated public school system. Instead, authorities say, the money was pocketed by Huntley’s niece, who served as the group’s treasurer, and another man, who is listed as president. 

It turns out that Huntley ran for office on both the Democratic and Working Families Party (WFP) tickets, according to New York State election results reviewed by Judicial Watch. This is relevant because the WFP has very close ties to the famously corrupt nonprofit with close ties to President Obama, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). In fact, JW found that the WFP shares office space in Brooklyn with two ACORN spinoffs, New York Communities for Change (NYCC) and the Mutual Housing Association of New York. 

When ACORN finally got busted for fraud, Congress cut its federal funding (Defund ACORN Act) and the group simply rebranded, creating a series of spinoffs operated by the same crooked people. Read all about it in a Judicial Watch special report born out of an extensive investigation that tracked the group and its affiliated organizations throughout the United States. The probe also revealed that tens of millions of dollars in ACORN’s funds and other assets are still unaccounted for.

Additionally, Huntley’s WFP is essentially a political operation of various unions, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  In fact, the WFP was co-founded by Patrick Gaspard, the SEIU’s political vice president before moving on the White House and the Democratic National Committee, former ACORN chairwoman Bertha Lewis and two other union bigwigs. Between 2006 and 2010, the SEIU gave $29,000 to Sen. Huntley’s campaign, JW’s probe found.

Here’s an interesting side note on the indicted state senator; in a show of solidarity with a black juvenile delinquent shot in Florida by a Hispanic man after an altercation, Huntley posted an amusing photo of herself on her official government website. She appears in a hooded sweatshirt, similar to the one worn by the teen, who had been suspended from school, when he got shot. In the caption, Senator Huntley claims “I am Trayvon Martin.”   

It marks the latest of several controversies for the DOJ’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) which has managed to maintain a copious budget through the years despite multiple allegations of cronyism. During the George W. Bush Administration, the OJJDP was accused of giving money to politically-connected groups that didn’t necessarily meet the agency’s goals.

This week the DOJ Inspector General released a report that exposes corruption surrounding a $138,130 grant that OJJDP awarded to an ACORN branch in New York City. The audit found that there were internal control weaknesses, unsupported grant expenditures, lack of contractor monitoring, weaknesses in budget management, inadequate grant reporting, unmet conditions and deficiencies with the program’s overall performance.

The IG also describes the New York group as a “pass-through entity” for ACORN, the crooked nonprofit that’s raked in huge sums of taxpayer dollars over the years. In 2009 Congress actually passed a law (Defund ACORN Act) to ban federal funding for ACORN after a series of exposés about the group’s illegal activities, which include fraudulent voter registration drives and involvement in the housing market meltdown. The group also has close ties to President Barack Obama.

Earlier this year a Judicial Watch probe found that the Obama Administration violated the ban on federal funding for ACORN by giving the beleaguered group nearly $80,000 to “combat housing and lending discrimination” against minorities. After sorting through droves of government records, Judicial Watch investigators discovered that an ACORN affiliate in New Orleans, ACORN Housing Corporation Inc., got $79,819 as part of a larger $40 million allocation to “fair housing organizations” that educate the public and combat discrimination.

This year Judicial Watch also published a special report (“The Rebranding of ACORN”) about the organization’s transformation into various spinoffs and affiliated groups. Amid a massive fraud scandal and a series of criminal probes, ACORN supposedly dismantled but the reality is that it simply changed its name. For instance, under the rebranding New England United 4 Justice, ACORN has been one of the driving forces behind the movement to end economic segregation and social injustice in the U.S. (Occupy Wall Street).