The "Christocrat"'s invasion of the GOP and similarities between what happened in Ohio in 2004 and what's happening in Arizona now.

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They Secretly Call Themselves 'Christocrats'
By John R Brakey

September 27, 2006

In Ohio, May 2005 the Rev. Rod Parsley pastor of the World Harvest Mega Church said at a gathering of 1,070 "Patriot Pastors" that the issues transcend partisan politics. The Reverend then declared:
"We're not Democrats. We're not Republicans. We're Christocrats."

Secretary of State of Ohio Ken Blackwell is their man and he is running for Governor in 06. His Patriot Pastors buddies are fond of saying, "As Ohio goes, so goes the nation."

In Arizona we also have a Christocrat running for Governor. Len Munsil, a Republican, and his campaign manager, Nathan Sproul, both are Christocrats. Sproul is former head of the Christian Coalition and in 2002 was the head of the Arizona Republican Party when Secretary of State Jan Brewer was first elected. Brewer then spent $60 million plus on highly questionable voting equipment which is hackable and that is the real sin!!

Much can be drawn and compared from the races for Governor in Ohio and Arizona, and the connections to the Christocrats.


Excerpts from Stealth Strategy by Rob Boston, of Americans United for Separation of Church and State
In Arizona, in 1995, at a Christian Coalition (CC) caucus, Guards were posted at the door with orders to remove anyone not personally approved by the caucus leader. During the session, Nathan Sproul, Arizona CC field director, coming off a victory getting Senator Strangelove Jon Kyl elected, urged attendees to become precinct committee chairs in the Republican Party but not to let anyone know the CC was behind the move. Sproul told the audience that the CC needs precinct committee chairs so they can elect delegates to attend the GOP National Convention and chose the presidential nominee.

At breakout sessions, conference participants were schooled in the art of concealing their ties to the CC, in a continuing pattern of "stealth politics." During a session titled "Religious Conservatives in the Republican Party," Bernice Roberts, chair of the Maricopa County, Ariz., Republican Party, urged CC supporters to work within the GOP with the goal of being appointed a precinct committeeman, but recommended keeping a low profile at the beginning.

"I want to give you some don'ts to do when you decide to go to your first Republican meeting," Roberts told the crowd. "Do not go with your Bible in your hand. Some would say to me, 'Does that mean you're ashamed of the Gospel?' No. CC has a statement, 'we're involved in the party, but we don't seek to become a party.' A political party is not a church. Its job is not to propagate a doctrine of faith and save souls. Its job is to choose candidates and win elections."

Roberts continued, "Do not attend your first Republican function with a pro-life sticker on your lapel." She also recommended against "passing out leaflets inviting people to your church" and cautioned attendees not to sit with "others whom you know to be the outspoken right wing of the Republican Party. That's a sure way not to get appointed." She also warned, "Do not pass out Gospel tracts."

After becoming a precinct committeeman, Roberts said, "Then you begin to recruit other Christians and before long, when you attend a Republican meeting you'll look around and realize, 'There's a whole lot of Christians here.' After that, the legislators in your state will take on a new face. The more Christians that are involved, the more you change the course of how your state runs.

"You can help keep the Republican Party on the right track by your involvement," Roberts continued. "The only way for the Republican platform to become liberal is for good people to not be involved in the process. When there are enough Christians involved in the party, we won't have to worry about the platform changing, because we'll be the ones writing the platform."


(The session on working within the GOP drew a big crowd, leading to a packed room. By contrast, a similar workshop on working within the Democratic Party attracted only a handful of people.) [Ed note.
Brief History; The CC plan is by "stealth" tactics, forged from Pat Robertson's presidential campaign of 1988, including his "surprising" second place finish in the Iowa caucus, over Vice President George H. Bush's weak third place. This victory set the stage and became the most politically significant technique within the CC and had three essential parts: (i) targeting low-profile elections that normally attract few voters, (ii) focusing get-out-the-vote efforts on certain conservative churches, (iii) instructing the candidates to hide its views from the public by avoiding public appearances and refusing to fill out questionnaires.

Excerpts from Right Wing Watch, by People for the American Way; Christian Coalition's History.
In 1992, Ralph Reed told a Coalition gathering, "The first strategy, and in many ways the most important strategy, for evangelicals is secrecy."
The CC's strategy first attracted national attention in 1990, when a coalition of right-wing groups, led by the Christian Coalition, helped candidates in San Diego win 60 of 90 races for a variety of offices, from school to hospital board.

Ralph Reed boasted of their early success with a few choice comments that helped make him famous. "... stealth was a big factor in San Diego's success," he said. "But that's just good strategy. It's like guerrilla warfare. If you reveal your location, all it does is allow your opponent to improve his artillery bearings. It's better to move quietly, with stealth, under cover of night." He expanded the metaphor elsewhere, "I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night." Later, under intense pressure, Reed has since renounced covert tactics and now denies the group ever used them. [Ed note.
However, the elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004 show that to not be true. From 2001 to 2002, Reed went on to be the State Chairman of GOP of Georgia and focused attention on federal races, including the campaign of Congressman Saxby Chambliss, who unseated Senator Max Cleland.

In 1996 the CC did not fully support Robert Dole; Arizona went to Bill Clinton by 2.2% 46.52%-44.29% over the right to life issue. This is not a mistake that Bush II & Rove would let happen again. Dole faced "a major political dilemma" as his record was consistently "hard line against abortion rights [which would] alienate moderate Republicans as well as strongly pro-choice voters, the same voters whose defection most likely cost George H. Bush the presidency in 1992." Moderating that position would "infuriate the religious conservatives who are the single-issue anti-abortion voters ... ".

To understand this dangerous complex movement you need to spend a few hours on several internet sites. One of the best is www.TheocracyWatch.org, a project run by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP), located at Cornell University. It was founded by Joan Bokaer, an educator.
On this site there's a page with two short internet videos, on which you can hear the radical Christian Right in their own words.

1. Taking Over the Republican Party TheocracyWatch, The Rise of Dominionism" Recorded October 11, 2004, 44 minutes Play the Real Video version or (Windows) WMV Video version.

2. "Life and Liberty for All Who Believe" hosted by the late Burt Lancaster, a powerful, 28 minute video documenting the birth of the Moral Majority, partly filmed in Arizona. Produced by People for the American Way in 1982, shows actual footage of the politicization of what has become the dominionists movement. (Edited 2004) Play the Real Video version or the WMV Video version.

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HOW THE "TRICK AND SWITCH" WAS WORKED WITH PROVISIONAL BALLOTS ON ELECTION DAY 2004 AT PCT 324, PIMA COUNTY, ARIZONA
By John R. Brakey and Dr David L. Griscom

Maria, a 27- year-old Democrat, was the 435th voter on Election Day Nov 2nd, 2004. Maria ordered an early ballot from the Recorders Office. Like many Americans she procrastinated too long and misplaced her early ballot. To make sure her vote counted, she went to her precinct to vote. When Maria arrived at the precinct she was required to vote a Provisional ballot, and rightfully so. Maria then signed all documents necessary as per the request of the poll workers, put her vote in an envelope, signed the affidavit on the outside and left.

What Maria didn't know was that she had become a victim of voter identity theft and disenfranchisement.

Right after she voted and left, the poll workers re-entered Maria's name on the Consecutive Number Register (CNR) as voter #444 and wrote "spoiled" next to her name on the CNR at position #435, indicating that she made a mistake and needed a replacement ballot ? which absolutely was not the case according to Maria.

Then, if they wished, the poll workers' were in a position to turn Maria's validly cast vote for Kerry into an ersatz spoiled ballot and then re-cast an illegal vote for Bush, alleging it to be Maria's "spoil replacement."

In any event, when Maria signed the "regular" Signature Roster, as instructed by the poll workers, she unknowingly rendered her Provisional ballot useless. If by accident it had been turned in, it would have been declared null and void. But a check of the records revealed that it was never was turned in. Furthermore, the Recorder could not have accepted it, because her signature on the "regular" Signature Roster would have made it look like a felonious double vote. This was just one example of what happened to at least 22 electors at Pct. 324 on Election Day 2004, according to a painstaking citizen audit of all public records.

The major reason why it takes so long to count the provisional ballots after an election is that the county Recorder's office has to first determine from the "regular" Signature Roster the names of voters who cast regular ballots and then enter these names into their computer data base before deciding which of the provisional ballots can be accepted. It should be noted that the Recorder uses only the signed affidavits off the provisional-ballot envelopes to decide who actually cast provisional ballots. That is, the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster serves no official purpose at all. Nevertheless, a citizen audit found 11 signatures on the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster made by persons whose names were not listed on the CNR, and there were 11 names (with signatures) on provisional ballots sent to the Recorder's office that did not match any signature on any of the Signature Rosters, or any name printed by the poll workers on the CNR. The latter could well have been identical with the 11 provisional ballots determined by the Recorder to have been invalid ? which they would have been if, for example, the signatures on the affidavits had been forged. (These anomalies constitute only a small part of the citizen-audit-based case for poll-worker fraud at Pct. 324 on Election Day 2004.)

By Arizona law, Maria should have been instructed by poll workers to sign the Provisional Ballot Signature Roster. The 'regular" Signature Roster should be signed only by voters whose ballots are entered into the precinct optical scanner. However, there are insufficient checks and balances (outside of citizen audits) to determine if the law has been correctly followed. The CNR and precinct's Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance go to the Election Department, while both the "regular" and Provisional Ballot Signature Rosters go to the Recorder's office. These two offices do not do cross comparisons these data!

At the end of the day, what really matters to any Election Department is the poll-worker-completed Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance, which documents the votes and is the only check and balance system available to the two major parties. Unfortunately, both parties have neglected this electoral accounting system, choosing NOT to remain vigilant, as history teaches us we must. The citizen audit of Pct. 324 found that the only way to reconcile the full body of the public record with the poll workers' Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance required the conclusion that there were 11 felony double votes and that 39 ballots that should have been cast as provisionals were illegally fed into the optical scanner on Election Day 2004.

The Election Department counts on the bipartisanship of poll workers and therefore never audits the Official Ballot Report and Certificate of Performance if it is signed by all poll workers. Accordingly, poll workers with different official party registrations who nevertheless secretly share highly partisan sympathies would be free to make mischief with high confidence of not being caught. Historically, the Election Department does not even do simple things like counting the number of spoiled ballots the poll workers claimed to have turned in or checking to see if all unused ballots are returned.
Note: Nathan Sproul knows this, he been running a Jim Crow operation since 1994 in Arizona. In 2004 he exported what he learned and taught others.

If you break down the payments by description from the RNC to Nathan Sproul.
VOTER REGISTRATION EFFORTS $2,043,551
GENERIC MEDIA BUYS $1,006,755
LODGING, TRANSPORTATION $4,022
MAILING COSTS $450,257
POLITICAL CONSULTING $4,854,576 Or slush fund ? pious poll workers?
Total $8,359,161
? Interestingly enough the largest single payment was Nov 1st 2004 for $1,668,733 listed as POLITICAL CONSULTING.

? Sproul also worked in Ohio and many other states. AUDIT-AZ theorizes $5 million was a slush fund for teaching the "Trick and Switch" and building "STACKS" to loyal ideologically-minded members of the Radical Christian Right.

? Sproul and Associates were caught destroying democratic voter registration forms, misrepresenting themselves to democratic voters, and skewing voter registrations to the Republican party in Oregon and Nevada in 2004. The US Department of Justice took up the case and it has never been heard from again. Not unlike the DOJs taking of the LD 20 ballots preventing a hand audit.

Authors Bio:
John R. Brakey is co-founder of Americans United for Democracy, Integrity &
Transparency in Elections.