A Virginia college student is going to prison—for registering dead voters to help sway the 2016 election to the Democrats.
James Madison University student Andrew Spieles, 21, had worked for Harrisonburg Votes, an affiliate of the Democratic Party.
According to a spokesman for 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.”
But there was one problem: many of the names Spieles registered to vote were dead people. Someone at the Registrar’s Office saw a name they recognized—and swiftly called the police.
“The Registrar’s Office discovered multiple instances of similarly falsified forms when it reviewed additional registrations,” added the U.S. Attorney spokesman. “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.”
Spieles pled guilty on Monday, and faces 100 to 120 days in jail.
