Virginia Voter Rolls Raise Questions – JP

Please Follow us on  Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Truth Social, Gettr, X, Youtube, Instagram

By Christopher Wright, Guest Contributor

Arlington, Virginia – The Virginia Voter Roll Maintenance Movement (VVRMM) is suspicious about a private mailbox operation in Arlington: there is another incomplete explanation from the Arlington Electoral Board.

On June 22, 2026, the VVRMM spoke with Dominick Schirripa, a Republican and Secretary of the Democrat-controlled Arlington Electoral Board, about a private mailbox operation at the UPS store located at 1405 South Fern Street in Arlington. As of August 2025, dozens of Arlington voters were registered through this address. See here.

The VVRMM has previously reported serious concerns at this location, including possible duplicate records, voters not in protected status using private mailboxes to register, and election mail—including ballots—being sent there without a clear legal basis. We also reported our efforts to work with local Registrar Gretchen Reinemeyer, which produced only obfuscation and apparent falsehoods. In a follow-up report, we noted that we had informed the Arlington Electoral Board of the situation; the Board showed no interest and took no action.

While we appreciate Secretary Schirripa’s willingness to speak with us in June, the conversation settled nothing and raised further questions. Secretary Schirripa supported Registrar Reinemeyer’s claim that she had reviewed the address in response to our alert and made changes to the voter rolls. We have not been provided with any documentation confirming those changes. He stated that the Registrar’s office sent query notices to the addresses in question, that some recipients failed to respond, and that those records were moved to inactive status. If true, this would represent a modest victory for election integrity, extracted from reluctant officials.

However, problems remain. Election mail may never reach the intended recipient if, for example, no box number appears in the registration record. VVRMM found that some records at 1405 South Fern Street lacked box numbers as of August 2025. Secretary Schirripa then offered an explanation that revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the law. He asserted that individuals in protected status under Virginia law—law enforcement, active-duty military, domestic-violence victims, the homeless, and others who may register without publicly listing a residential address—are required by regulation to use U.S. Postal Service post-office boxes and may not use private mailboxes. This is incorrect.

Virginia Code § 24.2-418(B) requires registrants in protected status to provide “a post office box address located within the Commonwealth” for public-record purposes. While this language arguably points to a USPS post-office box, it is ambiguous. The Virginia Department of Elections has interpreted the statute more broadly. Its current Handbook (Chapter 6, pages 8 and 29, August 2025) explicitly allows “P.O. Box or private mailbox (PMB) addresses” and “commercial mailboxes.” One may argue that the Department has exceeded the statute’s text, but the question has not been litigated. Secretary Schirripa is simply mistaken in claiming that only USPS boxes are permitted.

Building on this error, Secretary Schirripa made a further claim: the only reason election mail (including ballots) would be sent to a private mailbox is if the registrant claimed to live there. He maintained that election officials are legally required to list some address for homeless registrants and that, in Arlington, officials assign real existing addresses rather than descriptive ones such as “lives under Freedman’s Bridge.” According to Secretary Schirripa’s theory, all of the 1405 South Fern Street registrations must therefore have been assigned by the Registrar to homeless voters—because, in his view, no one in protected status may lawfully use a private mailbox. He did not assert that this is actually the case at that address; he merely offered it as a theoretical possibility.

Even if one accepts the conjecture, it collapses under scrutiny. Secretary Shirripa did not say whether the homeless registrants are informed of the assigned mailbox. Even if they are told, few could afford the roughly $35 monthly fee required to rent a private mailbox at that location. A homeless person cannot simply walk into the store and demand mail from a box never rented in their name. Sending election mail—including ballots—to a private mailbox that the registrant has not paid for, cannot access, and may not even know it exists, is irrational. Returned mail is the best-case outcome; the risk of interception by unauthorized persons remains real.

This is why Secretary Schirripa’s suggestion that 100 percent of the registrations at 1405 South Fern Street belong to homeless voters is preposterous. A former Arlington Electoral Board member (also a Republican) previously told VVRMM the opposite extreme: that every registration at the address belongs to a voter in protected status—including those lacking mailbox numbers. That claim is equally implausible. The same former member also alleged that the Registrar invents addresses for friends, a charge VVRMM has reported before.

The situation is deeply troubling. Secretary Schirripa does not appear to know the actual facts on the ground, and he clearly misunderstands the governing law. The Registrar refuses to explain what is occurring, and the Electoral Board declines to investigate. Feeling better about our elections yet?

The VVRMM urges election-integrity advocates across Virginia to exercise their right of public inspection of the voter rolls and to examine private-mailbox operations throughout the state. Something irregular is happening here.

_____________________________________
About the Author:
Chris Wright is founder of the Virginia Voter Rolls Maintenance Movement and resides in Northern Virginia. He has written previously for The JP, as cited above.