PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Authorities in Lancaster are investigating after the majority of 2,500 voter registration applications delivered to the Board of Elections last week were found to be fraudulent.
Lancaster District Attorney Heather Adams says the two batches were delivered shortly before Pennsylvania’s Oct. 21 voter registration deadline.
Adams says she knows of at least two other counties investigating similar cases of voter fraud.
"At this point, we have confirmed violation of our crimes code as well as our elections code,” she said. Adams declined to name the other counties.
She says investigators believe the applications are connected to a large-scale canvassing effort in June, though many are dated Aug. 15.
“While preparing to process these applications, staff noticed that numerous applications appeared to have the same handwriting, were filled out on the same day with unknown signatures, and some were previously registered voters, and the signatures on file did not match the signatures on the application,” Adams said.
At this point, authorities have determined about 60% of the applications are fraudulent. However, there are some legitimate applications among the 2,500.