Lancaster County officials call 400+ voter registration applications ‘fraudulent’

Lancaster County officials said 400 voter registration applications that were part of a batch of 2,500 received last month were "fraudulent." They also addressed legal challenges to the eligibility of 700 overseas voters but declined to reveal crucial details.

Commissioner Ray D'Agostino, during Monday morning's Board of Elections meeting, said about 17% of the problem batch of applications were deemed "fraudulent" by investigators. More than half, 57%, were found to be legitimate, and were processed accordingly, D'Agostino said. That leaves 26% under further investigation.

On Oct. 25, District Attorney Heather Adams said in a news conference some of the batch of applications included information of people who told investigators they did not fill out the registration form or sign the form.

D'Agostino declined to give a hard count of how many applications were under investigation and also refrained from saying whether a voter registration group named by officials in other counties was implicated.

Monroe and York counties have tied an Arizona-based organization, Field+Media Corps , to problem voter applications under respective investigations.

The CEO of the organization, Francisco Heredia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. The organization's website, which showed it had helped with voter registration drives for mostly liberal and progressive groups, was no longer active Monday.

The update also underscored how the county's handling of suspicious registrations is being misrepresented by former President Donald Trump . Over the past week, and again Sunday at a Lancaster Airport campaign rally, Trump repeated the falsehood that 2,600 ballots had been discovered by the county and that they all had the same penmanship.

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Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder, noting the former president's remarks, said all three commissioners had been promoting the county's elections as safe and secure, and she hoped her Republican colleagues would agree with her that Trump's remarks should be called out by county leaders as wrong.

Republicans D'Agostino and Josh Parsons again opted not to directly respond to Trump's comments, saying they could not address every claim on social media. Parsons attended Trump's rally at Lancaster Airport.

Friday hearing on federal voters The meeting Monday morning highlighted how the county was juggling two different election issues ahead of in-person voting Tuesday. Lancaster, like other Pennsylvania counties, is dealing with challenges filed late last week to overseas ballots.

Though the elections board did not offer many details about the challenges to the eligibility of 723 overseas voters, D'Agostino announced that an Elections Board hearing on the matter will take place at 9 a.m. Friday in the commissioners meeting room in the Lancaster County Government Center.

The challenges specifically target the voting eligibility of overseas voters who are allowed to vote for federal offices — president and Congress.

On Saturday, the Pennsylvania Department of State confirmed 14 counties received voter eligibility challenges.

Other counties have either already held hearings on the challenges or made the challengers public. Members of PA Fair Elections and the Election Research Institute, groups that promote conspiracies about election administration, have been behind some of the challenges, as have GOP state Sens. Cris and Jarrett Coleman.

On Monday, Lancaster County Solicitor Jackie Pfursich said the county was working with the Department of State to notify the voters before the Friday hearing.

Lancaster County officials declined to publicly reveal who was behind the challenges here. Pfursich said "at least one" individual was behind at least some of the challenges, adding that the county received the challenges Friday at 4 p.m., and staff were still reviewing them.

The county declined to make copies of the challenges public. Pfursich directed an attorney representing the ACLU of Pennsylvania to file a public records request with the county, given that the law exempted at least some election records from public viewing while an election is active.

The solicitor suggested the challenges would be included in an agenda published ahead of Friday's hearing.

In hearings already held, in Chester and York counties, all the challenges were tossed out by election boards, citing a lack of evidence and federal law governing overseas voting.