The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia sentenced on Monday a James Madison University student to at least 100 days in prison for registering names of deceased persons to vote, CBS 6 WTVR reported.
Andrew J. Spiels worked for a Democrat-affiliated organization known as Harrisonburg Votes at the time he committed the crime, according to acting United States Attorney Rick A. Mountcastle .
“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 CBS6. “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.”
A staffer at the registrar’s office recognized a name on one of the registration forms submitted was the deceased father of a nearby county judge. At that point, the registrar’s office found numerous instances of “similarly falsified forms” after going through additional registrations.
“Some were in the names of deceased individuals while others bore incorrect middle names, birth dates, and social security numbers,” the spokesperson said. “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.”
According to the spokesperson, Spieles later conceded that he falsified the voter registrations forms by getting hold of the name, age and address of persons from “walk sheets” provided to him by the Virginia Democratic Party. From there, he made up birth dates based on the ages shown on the walk sheet and falsified social security numbers.
“Spieles admitted that he created all 18 fraudulent forms himself and that no one else participated in the crime,” said the spokesperson.
