HARRISBURG, Pa.— In Pennsylvania, a key presidential battleground, about 2,500 voter registration forms were flagged for possible fraud by poll workers in one county. This led to a criminal investigation. Two more counties were told to look for problems that were like this one.
The forms got to the Lancaster County elections office just before the state’s registration deadline on Monday. Officials said Friday that they were part of a bigger effort to get people to sign up. Some of them had fake names, weird handwriting, signs that didn’t look right, wrong addresses, or other details that were not right.
At a news conference, Heather Adams, the district attorney for Lancaster County, said that two other counties that were not named got similar applications and were told to look into them. She said that poll workers “noticed that numerous applications” had similarities. However, officials did not say how many suspicious applications there were or how many had already been fully looked into.
Adams, a Republican who was chosen, said, “At this point, it looks like a well-planned operation.” “Of course, the investigation is still going on.” Additionally, we will investigate who took part and how high it goes.
During the investigation, the group of applications has been separated. This means that people can’t get or cast ballots until they are considered valid. Polls show that the race for president in Pennsylvania is very close, so 19 electoral votes are being fought over.
At the news conference, Republican Lancaster Commissioner Ray D’Agostino, who is also the chair of the election board, said, “The truth is, we’ve caught this.” “This is wrong.” It’s not allowed. It’s not right. We found it and will take care of it.
Adams and the other people on the county election board didn’t say who dropped off the forms or who they might have been working with.
According to D’Agostino, the applications were not limited to one party and were gathered in several places in Lancaster, which is mostly Republican.
In a statement released Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of State praised the election workers for “their hard work in spotting this possible fraud and bringing it to the attention of law enforcement.” Lancaster officials also called the office of the state attorney general, but they refused to say anything.
Adams said that problems have been found with about three out of five applications that have been fully looked into so far. She also said that other 2,500 applications had been checked to make sure they were correct and were being handled normally.
Many of the applications were from after August 15 and most of them were from Lancaster City. Adams said that the forms were gathered as part of a “large-scale canvassing operation.”
Adams said, “In some cases, applications had correct personal identification information, like the correct address, phone number, date of birth, driver’s license number, and Social Security number—but the people listed on the applications told detectives that they did not ask for the form.” “They didn’t fill out the form, and they checked to make sure that the signature on it wasn’t theirs.”
Source: Pennsylvania County Launches Investigation into 2,500 Voter Registrations Amid Fraud Concerns
