York County in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania is looking into an “overabundance” of voter registration forms and requests for mail ballots that were sent to the elections office after another county received thousands of voter registration forms that were flagged for potential fraud.
The York County elections office received a “large delivery containing thousands of election-related materials from a third-party organization,” including voter registration forms and mail-ballot applications, York County president commissioner Julie Wheeler said in a statement to the York Daily Record.
“As with all submissions, our staff follows a process for ensuring all voter registrations and mail-in ballot requests are legal. That process is currently underway. If suspected fraud is identified, we will alert the District Attorney’s Office, which will then conduct an investigation.”
Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground in next week’s election, and both Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are seeking the state’s 19 electoral votes in what polls indicate is an extremely close contest.
Wheeler told Fox 43 on Monday: “It’s not unusual to get large stacks of voter registrations or large stacks of requests for mail-in ballots, it’s just this was an overabundance of registrations from one particular organization.”
She added: “We need to do our homework before we go and make accusations when we don’t have the data to back it up.”
Wheeler has been contacted for further comment via email.
A person drops off a mail-in ballot on October 15, 2024, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Officials in York County in Pennsylvania are looking into potential fraud following a large delivery of election-related mail.
Hannah Beier/Getty Images
Wheeler’s comments come as an investigation is underway in Lancaster County, where officials said fraudulent voter registrations had been found among 2,500 forms that arrived at the county elections office shortly before Pennsylvania’s October 21 deadline to register to vote.
Election workers had “noticed that numerous applications appeared to have the same handwriting, were filled out on the same day with unknown signature, and some were previously registered voters (…) and the signatures on file did not match the signatures on the application,” Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, an elected Republican, said at a news conference on Friday.
About 60 percent of the applications that have been investigated so far have been identified as fraudulent, Adams said, though she did not disclose the total number of applications that have been investigated fully. Her office has been contacted for comment via email.
Adams said issues with the applications included false names, false personal identification information and inaccurate addresses.
“In some cases, applications contained correct personal identification information, such as the correct address, correct phone number, date of birth, driver’s license number and Social Security number but the individuals listed on the applications informed detectives that they did not request the form,” she said. “They did not complete the form and verified that the signature on the form was not theirs.”
She said it is believed that the fraudulent registrations are connected to a “large-scale canvassing operation” dating back to June. However, she said most of the applications date from August 15 and a majority were from residents in Lancaster.
It “appears to be an organized effort at this point,” Adams said, but noted the investigation is ongoing. “We’ll be looking into who exactly participated in it and how far up it goes,” she said.
Adams said two other counties, which she did not name, had received similar applications that are under investigation.
