'Outside organization' investigated over 'fraudulent' voter registrations in red PA county

Pennsylvania is considered one of the biggest prizes of the 2024 Electoral College. Now, local officials are investigating what may be an underhanded effort to steal it.

NBC News reported Friday that police in Lancaster County have launched an investigation into an "outside organization" that submitted roughly 2,500 voter registrations just before the Keystone State's October 21 deadline. The outlet reported that approximately 60% of those registrations appear to be "fraudulent," with many of them purportedly being filled out by the same person.

"We have confirmed violation of our crimes code as well as our elections code," District Attorney Heather Adams told NBC. "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."

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Adams said that the forms appear to be part of a "large-scale canvassing operation" dating back to June. Police are currently reaching out to voters whose names were listed on the forms to verify their authenticity. And elections officials are emphasizing that valid registrations will still be processed so voters who lawfully registered can still cast their ballots.

“Applications that have gone through this extensive review and investigative process and are not deemed to be fraudulent are being processed,” Lancaster County Board of Elections chair Ray D’Agostino said. “I want to stress this, no eligible voter will be turned away.”

Officials are also adding that the fact the discrepancy was spotted roughly two weeks before Election Day is a signal that the 2024 election will be conducted securely and with integrity. Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt — who is the top election official in the battleground state — said that incidents like the recent spate of fraudulent registrations in Lancaster County are "infrequent."

"As their officials noted, grassroots efforts to register voters across the Commonwealth are important and legitimate, and the safeguards in the system allowed them to identify and isolate these suspicious applications," the Department of State told NBC. "No eligible voter will be denied the ability to register, and the Department encourages any residents who recently registered to vote to check their voter registration online to ensure its accuracy."

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Lancaster County is a reliably Republican jurisdiction, with former President Donald Trump easily taking the county in both 2016 and 2020. In the last election, he won 57% of the vote in Lancaster County, and defeated Hillary Clinton in the county with roughly the same margin of victory in 2016. Biden won Pennsylvania in 2020, flipping it from red to blue by roughly 80,000 votes across the commonwealth.

Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral votes, is the largest prize of the so-called "Blue Wall," which also includes Michigan and Wisconsin. If Vice President Kamala Harris wins those three states, she is also projected to win the Electoral College majority assuming all reliably blue states also vote for the Democratic ticket. Likewise, the Wall Street Journal has reported that if Harris or Trump carries both Georgia and Pennsylvania, they would be the overwhelming favorites to win the election.

Click here to read NBC's report in full.

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