Officials in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, have announced that they have identified “as many as 2,500 completed voter registration forms” as being possibly fraudulent, less than two weeks before the hotly contested November election.
A Lancaster County Board of Elections spokesman said in a Friday news release that elections staff and the district attorney’s office are “assessing the nature and volume of the fraud.” The suspected instances of fraudulent voter registration forms came from two batches that were dropped off “at or near” the Board of Elections office around the Monday registration deadline for the election, and staff members raised concerns during the normal application review process.
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Lancaster County Commissioner Ray D’Agostino said at a Friday press conference that some of the problems detected with the voter registration forms included duplicate handwriting and signatures, unverifiable or inaccurate addresses, driver’s license numbers, and Social Security numbers.
“I want to stress this, no eligible voter will be turned away,” D’Agostino said, noting that state officials have been notified of the suspected fraud.
Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said at the press conference that an investigation into the potentially fraudulent applications is underway.
“At this point, we have confirmed violation of our crimes code, as well as our elections code,” Adams said. “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.”
Pennsylvania is widely viewed as one of the key states for former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to win the race for the White House. Trump won the state in 2016, while Joe Biden defeated him in the state in 2020 on his way to the presidency.
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In 2020, Lancaster County voted for Trump over Biden by about 15 percentage points, while in 2016, county voters voted for Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by an even wider margin.
The Cook Political Report has rated the Keystone State a toss-up, and both campaigns have planned several events in the state in the closing days of the race to woo Pennsylvanians. Trump leads Harris in the RealClearPolitics polling average in the state, 48.3%-47.7%.