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 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 that 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.

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

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.