Third instance of voter registration dumping found in Virginia

A third instance of fraudulent voter registration has been uncovered in the important swing state of Virginia, where a Republican consultant has been arrested and thousands of discarded voter registration forms were recovered from a dumpster earlier this week. According to the Not Larry Sabato blog, a law student at James Madison University registered to vote on campus, but found when she tried to verify the change online, found that her form had never been submitted.

On Thursday, that 31-year-old Colin Small, a Republican operative employed by Pinpoint, a firm contracted by Republican Party of Virginia, was arrested and charged with "four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of disclosure of voter registration application, and one count of obstruction of justice" for throwing active voter registration forms into a dumpster.

Not Larry Sabato blogger Ben Trippett wrote that 2 to 3 weeks ago, a woman, identified only by her first name, Lucy, attempted to update her voter registration at a table on the campus of James Madison University.

"She stopped to fill out a voter registration form to change her voting address from her parents house in Fairfax to her dorm address in Harrisonburg so she could vote in person on election day," wrote Trippett.  "On Wednesday night Lucy went online to check her voter registration status and found out she had not been registered in Harrisonburg- meaning whoever was collecting her form on campus had not turned it in."

This makes James Madison the third Virginia location where operatives have collected voter registration forms and disposed of them.  According to the blog, the registration forms recovered from the dumpster were completed at "a local street festival and  a registration at the local community college."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Small, the arrested operative, was "working as a supervisor as part of a registration operation in eight swing states financed by the Republican National Committee," run by a company called Strategic Allied Consulting.  When questions arose about Strategic's practices, including allegations of "submitting forged forms and of dumping Democratic registrations," the RNC fired the company, at which point Small and his team were re-hired by the Republican Party of Virginia.

[image via spirit of america / Shutterstock.com]