Election system works, catches forged voter applications in Lancaster County

Lancaster County commissioners announced on Friday that election workers uncovered forged voter registration applications in two batches of 2,500 registrations. They praised the workers and election system for catching the fraudulent applications.   

Lancaster County elections officials announced on Friday that they were opening an investigation into up to 2,500 fraudulent voter registration forms that were linked to a paid canvassing operation. 

The canvassers collected signatures at shopping centers, parking lots, grocery stores and businesses around Lancaster county, and the batches that were dropped off at the county contained legitimate registration forms. 

All three county commissioners praised the county’s elections staff for catching the fraudulent applications that contained duplicate handwriting, inconsistent addresses and inconsistent drivers license and social security numbers.

Similar problems with voter registration drives are not unheard of throughout the country—oftentimes, the problem lies more with sloppy or fraudulent work from individual canvassers as opposed to an overarching intentional effort.

The commissioners went on to reiterate that Lancaster’s upcoming election will be safe and secure and that the system worked with catching these forged applications. 

“We’re going to continue to operate the Lancaster County election system with integrity of veracity and transparency,” Commissioner Josh Parsons said.

“The people of Lancaster County and the nation can feel secure that our systems worked. Our election in Lancaster County is secure and we will hold accountable those who threaten it with fraud or anything else.”

Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams stated that there were at least two other counties that have received similar applications that are being investigated, but did not name them. 

Officials refused to release any potential names of individuals or the group or groups responsible for these allegations, but they are looking at possible criminal and election violations. 

“At this point, we have confirmed violations of our crimes code as well as our elections code,” Adams said. “We have all available detectives working on this. We’re all hands on deck so that we can properly assess the validity of these applications in a timely manner.”

Commissioner Ray D’Augustino told reporters that he believes this is an isolated incident and took the time to thank canvassers for registering voters over the past several months. 

“We’ve gotten large batches over the last several weeks from canvassers, and I know we don’t want to disparage all folks that are registering people. This seems to be at this point … like it’s isolated to maybe one organization,” D’Augustino said.