The Lancaster County commissioners and District Attorney Heather Adams said instances of voter registration fraud were discovered in batches of last-minute submissions linked to canvassing largely focused on the city since June.
A large number of suspicious voter registration applications were dropped off at the county elections office near Monday’s deadline, county officials said. An investigation by the district attorney’s office found incorrect addresses, false identification information, false names and names that did not match Social Security information.
The officials said one or two organizations that conducted registration drives in the county in recent months were responsible for the applications. They did not name the organizations.
The district attorney did not provide information on who was funding the canvassers but asked anyone who had been approached about suspicious registrations to contact her office.
“It appears to be an organized effort,” Adams said, noting that the investigation is ongoing.
Adams said her investigators found problems with 60% of the registrations they have so far reviewed. She did not say how many of the 2,500 registrations had been investigated. She said applications came from people living in the city, as well as Columbia, Elizabethtown, Akron, Ephrata, Stevens and Strasburg.
She also said the same organization or organizations