Pennsylvania authorities are investigating fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County

Pennsylvania officials said Friday they are investigating 2,500 fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County.

When examining the personal information, identification and signatures listed on the forms, the election officials found incorrect information, signatures that did not match the signatures the voter had on file, and forms filled by the same person with the same signature.

District Attorney Heather Adams told reporters Friday that the application forms were filled out by paid canvassers as part of a “large-scale canvassing operation” prior to June. She also said at least two counties may have received fraudulent registration applications. .

“We have confirmed that our criminal laws and election regulations were violated. We have all detectives working on it. We are all hands on deck to assess the validity of these applications in due course,” he said.

Election officials notified law enforcement officials of problems they found while reviewing voter registration forms and a wide-ranging investigation was launched, prompting police to contact voters listed on the forms.

After a detailed review of registration applications, at least 60% of the forms investigated so far have been determined to be fraudulent, Adams said. Some applications seem legitimate.

“Applications that go through this extensive review and investigation process and are not considered fraudulent are processed,” said Ray D’Agostino, chairman of the county Board of Elections. “I want to stress this, no eligible voter will be turned away.”

In key battleground state Pennsylvania, all forms were dropped on or near the October 21 voter registration deadline.

The Pennsylvania Department of State praised Lancaster election workers in a statement for their work and said it supports the county.

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“As their officials noted, grassroots efforts to register voters across the Commonwealth are important and legitimate, and safeguards in the system allowed these suspicious uses to be identified and isolated,” the department’s statement said. “No eligible voter will be denied the ability to register, and the department encourages any residents who have recently registered to vote to check their voter registration online to ensure its accuracy.”

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

Conservative activist Scott Pressler, founder of an early voting action group that seeks to register Republicans in swing states like Pennsylvania, declined to commit to the plan. In a post on X On Friday.

“I can say unequivocally that this has nothing to do with @EarlyVoteAction. Our staff is handing out voter registration forms when we’re registering voters. We’ve sent out 400 forms at one time in Luzerne County,” Pressler said. Position

This is not the first time that paid canvassers have created fake political forms. In Michigan, where candidates must collect signatures from supporters to get on the ballot, five Republican candidates are ineligible to run for governor in 2022, and paid petition gatherers faked countless nomination petitions.

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