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Oct 26, 2024

Pennsylvania officials investigating fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County

Pennsylvania officials said Friday they are investigating as many as 2,500 fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County that election workers flagged during routine reviews of the

Pennsylvania officials said Friday they are investigating as many as 2,500 fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County that election workers flagged during routine reviews of the forms.

When reviewing the personal information, identification and signatures listed on the forms, election officials found inaccurate information, signatures that did not match the one they had for the voter on file, and forms seemingly completed by the same individual with the same handwriting.

The application forms were completed by paid canvassers, as part of a “large-scale canvassing operation" dating back to June, District Attorney Heather Adams told reporters on Friday. She added that at least two other counties may have received fraudulent registration applications, too.

“We have confirmed violation of our crimes code as well as our elections code. We have all available detectives working on this. We are all hands on deck so that we can properly assess the validity of these applications in a timely manner,” she said.

Election officials notified law enforcement authorities of the issues they discovered while reviewing the voter registration forms and a wide-scale investigation was launched, prompting police to reach out to voters whose information was listed on the forms.

After undergoing extensive review of registration applications, at least 60% of the forms that have been investigated so far have been determined to be fraudulent so far, Adams said. Some of the applications appear to be legitimate.

“Applications that have gone through this extensive review and investigative process and are not deemed to be fraudulent are being processed,” said Ray D’Agostino, chair of the county’s Board of Elections. “I want to stress this, no eligible voter will be turned away.”

The forms were all dropped off at or near the voter registration deadline, which was Oct. 21 in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state.

Pennsylvania's Department of State applauded the Lancaster election staff for their work in a statement and said it was offering support to the county.

"As their officials noted, grassroots efforts to register voters across the Commonwealth are important and legitimate, and the safeguards in the system allowed them to identify and isolate these suspicious applications," the department's statement read. "No eligible voter will be denied the ability to register, and the Department encourages any residents who recently registered to vote to check their voter registration online to ensure its accuracy."

During an appearance on NBC News' “Meet the Press NOW,” Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said incidents like this are “infrequent” and should give people faith that the system works.

Asked who was behind it, Schmidt said, “We understand from the county that there was an outside organization collecting registrations and submitted them right before the voter registration deadline.”

Lancaster County, located in the southeastern part of the state, has leaned Republican in recent elections.

Conservative activist Scott Pressler, founder of the group Early Vote Action, which seeks to register Republicans in swing states like Pennsylvania, denied involvement in the scheme in a post on X on Friday.

"I can unequivocally state that this has nothing to do with @EarlyVoteAction. Our staff turn in voter registration forms as we register voters. The most forms we’ve ever turned in at one time was 400 in Luzerne County," Pressler said in the post.

This wouldn’t be the first time paid canvassers have forged political forms. In Michigan, where candidates must gather signatures from supporters to make the ballot, five Republican candidates were disqualified from running for governor in 2022 after paid petition gatherers forged countless nominating petitions.

Jane C. Timm is a senior reporter for NBC News.