Virginia Student Registered Dead Voters, Ends Up in Jail

LISTEN TO TLR’S LATEST PODCAST:

By Kody Fairfield

A student from a Virginia university is going to spend at least 100 days in jail after admitting to paying for and registering deceased voters for Democrats during the 2016 presidential election.

Andrew J. Spieles, who is 21 and attends James Madison University, has pleaded guilty to submitting the names of dead voters to the registrar’s office in Harrisonburg, WTVR-TV reported.

According to WTVR-TV, Spieles worked for Harrisonburg Votes, a political organization affiliated with the Democratic Party, at the time he committed the crimes.

From the U.S. Attorney’s Office:

“In July 2016 Spieles’ job was to register as many voters as possible and reported to Democratic Campaign headquarters in Harrisonburg. 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.” 

Spieles, according to the report, was caught by someone at the Registrar’s Office who recognized the name of a deceased father of a Rockingham County Judge.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office continued:

“The Registrar’s Office discovered multiple instances of similarly falsified forms when it reviewed additional registrations. Some were in the names of deceased individuals while others bore incorrect middle names, birth dates, and social security numbers. The Registrar’s Office learned that the individuals named in these forms had not in fact submitted the new voter registrations. The assistant registrar’s personal knowledge of the names of some of the individuals named in the falsified documents facilitated the detection of the crime.

“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. Spieles admitted that he created all 18 fraudulent forms himself and that no one else participated in the crime.”

According to WTVR-TV, the FBI and Harrisonburg Police Department investigated the crime.

Follow Kody on Twitter.

Send news tips to EICfairfieldTLR@Gmail.com.

WATCH TLR’S LATEST VIDEO: