A Virginia student is going to prison for registering deceased individuals’ names to the voter registration office.
Andrew J. Spieles, 21, of Harrisonburg, pleaded guilty to filing 18 fake voter registration applications in the city while working with Democratic-affiliated groups. He'll spend between 100 and 120 days in prison now, reported Richmond.com.
As a student at James Madison University, he worked for the Democrat-aligned Harrisonburg Votes when he carried out the crime, acting United States Attorney Rick A. Mountcastle said, according to WTVR.
“In July 2016 Spieles’ job was to register as many voters as possible and reported to Democratic Campaign headquarters in Harrisonburg,” a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesperson told the station.
“In August 2016, Spieles was directed to combine his registration numbers with those of another individual because their respective territories overlapped. After filling out a registration form for a voter, Spieles entered the information into a computer system used by the Virginia Democratic Party to track information such as name, age, address and political affiliation. Every Thursday an employee/volunteer hand-delivered the paper copies of the registration forms to the Registrar’s Office in Harrisonburg,” the spokesperson added.
Spieles said he faked the applications to hit the quota, court documents show. It’s unclear if there were fraudulent votes cast last year due to his actions.
“Spieles later admitted that he prepared the false voter registration forms by obtaining the name, age, and address of individuals from ‘walk sheets’ provided to him by the Virginia Democratic Party, fabricating a birth date based on the ages listed in the walk sheet, and fabricating the social security numbers,” the spokesperson added, according to WTVR.
A Registrar’s Office employee discovered his efforts and notified local police. The employee apparently recognized an odd name on a form, which turned out to be the deceased father of a Rockingham County Judge.
“The Registrar’s Office discovered multiple instances of similarly falsified forms when it reviewed additional registrations” and then “learned that the individuals named in these forms had not in fact submitted the new voter registrations,” the spokesperson said, the Free Beacon reported.
