UPDATE: Lancaster County officials hold onto crucial details of investigation over ‘fraudulent’ voter registration applications
The Lancaster County commissioners and District Attorney Heather Adams said instances of voter registration fraud were discovered in batches of last-minute submissions linked to canvassing largely focused on the city since June.
A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday’s deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney’s office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information.
The officials said one or two organizations that conducted registration drives in the county in recent months were responsible for the applications. They did not name the organizations.
The district attorney did not provide information on who was funding the canvassers but asked anyone who had been approached about suspicious registrations to contact her office.
“It appears to be an organized effort,” Adams said, noting that the investigation is ongoing.
Adams said her investigators found problems with 60% of the registrations they have so far reviewed. She did not say how many of the 2,500 registrations had been investigated. She said applications came from people living in the city, as well as Columbia, Elizabethtown, Akron, Ephrata, Stevens and Strasburg.
She also said the same organization or organizations responsible for submitting the registrations were believed to be active in two other counties. She did not name those counties but said her investigators had reached out to them.
Some of the registration applications submitted by the groups were found to be genuine, Adams said, and those voters will be registered.
On Friday afternoon, the Department of State issued a statement praising the actions by the Lancaster County officials.
“The Department has been in contact with the county and is offering support in its ongoing investigation. The Department applauds the efforts of the election staff for their diligent work in spotting this potential fraud and bringing it to the attention of law enforcement. The Department guidance in cases like this is for counties to immediately contact law enforcement, which is exactly what Lancaster County officials did,” the statement said.
Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder said that as of the end of Oct. 24, 365,210 people are registered to vote in Lancaster County, a record. She said 68,873 requests for mail ballots had been submitted as of Thursday, and that 46,000 mail ballots had been returned. She said 350 people have been going to the county election office daily to vote early.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated. The press conference was streamed online.
Registration complaints
Friday’s press conference comes less than a week after administrators of a nonpartisan voter registration program at Franklin & Marshall College said they were concerned that students’ applications were not being acted on by the county.
Their complaints drew the attention of Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who ordered the county to provide more information about the status of registrations.
The F&M officials also pointed to the experience of a student who was denied a mail-in ballot after he presented an out-of-state ID. The student had been registered since 2022. His registration was canceled but reinstated days later after the student provided verification that his registration in his home state had been canceled. Pennsylvania law does not require college student or any other registration applicants to prove that any prior registrations have been canceled.
At two meetings this week, the county commissioners denied that elections staff provided incorrect information to registration applicants or anyone requesting a mail-in ballot. They said the elections office was processing thousands of applications while also fielding numerous requests for mail-in ballots, taxing staff as they prepare for the Nov. 5 election.