(Donald Trump highlighted the series of concerns in Pennsylvania, including voter registration fraud, during his Mar-a-Lago press conference Tuesday.
“There’s some bad spots in Pennsylvania where some serious things have been caught or are in the process of being caught,” he said.
Although not a must-win, the Democrat-run battleground state’s 19 electoral votes make any pathway to the presidency considerably more viable. Trump had a slight advantage in recent polling. However, it was the only tossup state in which he was known to be behind in early voting.
The Pennsylvania’s State Department’s daily report shows 1.4 million mail-in ballots have been received so far, including 849,849 from registered Democrats; 468,067 from Republicans; and 155,909 from unaffiliated voters.
The total number of ballots requested was likely still to rise ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for voters to ask for one. Overall, more than 9 million residents are registered to vote in the state.
Trump’s comment addressed a growing list of early election missteps, including batches of fraudulent voter registrations intercepted in Lancaster County; a bomb threat at the Republican Campaign Committee headquarters in Montgomery County; and election workers disbanding a line of voters returning ballots in-person in Delaware County.
Other reports broke Tuesday afternoon of voters being sent away early in Bucks County, fueling outrage online from watchdogs including Human Events editor Jack Posobiec.
BREAKING: Bucks County resident tells me this officer was angrily telling voters they couldnt vote today at Doylestown courthouse “You better get back. You better listen to me” pic.twitter.com/dJu86vfwcu
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 29, 2024
Questions have also risen after more batches of voter registration forms were dropped off this week in York County, which sits just across the Susquehanna River from Lancaster County.
In a statement to multiple media outlets, including CBS 21, York County President Commissioner Julie Wheeler confirmed a “large delivery of thousands of election-related materials from a third-party organization” had been received.
Completed registration forms and mail-in ballot applications were contained within.
“As with all submissions, our staff follows a process for ensuring all voter registrations and mail-in ballot requests are legal,” she said.
“That process is currently underway,” she continued. “If suspected fraud is identified, we will alert the District Attorney’s Office, which will then conduct an investigation. We will have no further comment until our internal review has been completed.”
The investigation into 2,500 suspected fraudulent ballots in nearby Lancaster County remains ongoing.
In a press conference Friday, elected officials and investigators with the attorney general’s office said 60% of the applications reviewed so far had been deemed illegitimate.
The registrations in question were delivered in two batches. Ray D’Agostino, vice chairman of the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners, said workers noticed similar handwriting and signatures on stacks of applications. Law enforcement stepped in soon after.
District Attorney Heather Adams said some applications included pilfered personal information with falsified signatures. On others, voters were tied to inaccurate Social Security numbers, addresses and driver’s licenses.
Investigators suspect the batches were connected to a voter-registration canvassing effort dating back to June. The earliest dates listed on the applications was Aug. 15.
“Thankfully, we stopped part one,” Adams said.
“Part two is whether or not anyone intended to turn that application then into a fraudulent vote,” she added. “For all intents and purposes, that has been stopped because of the good work of those in the elections office and the investigators.”
Adams said two other counties may have received submissions from the same effort, though she declined to identify them. It is unclear if York County was one of the two being referenced.
No specific party was overrepresented in the batches. Sometimes, the applications were filed for address changes alone. More than 365,000 voters are registered in Lancaster County, 46,000 of whom have already turned in mail-in ballots.
“Anyone who tries part two potentially, we are going to find you,” D’Agostino said.
Earlier in the week, election workers faced harassment from the American Civil Liberties Union and Pennsylvania’s State Department for scrutinizing applications from college students already registered in other states.
According to WGAL, commissioners dispelled the allegations on Tuesday, saying that a Franklin and Marshall student with a Connecticut driver’s license had questions about where he could legally vote.
In another instance, an election worker was accused of telling a voting campaign organizer that registrations in other states had to be canceled before Pennsylvania would approve new applications.
The latter is against the law, but officials said it didn’t happen.
During Friday’s news conference, Commission Chairman Josh Parsons again chastised the reports as “absurd” and praised workers for not “cutting corners on election security.”
He also had a message for Secretary of State Al Schmidt “and anyone else” concerned by the allegations.
“We are running what may be the largest, most complicated election in our lifetime and we do not have time for that kind of political nonsense,” he said.
“The Department of State should be helping counties run this election, and frankly, it should be now putting out a warning to other counties about this suspected fraud operation that we have stopped, in case it is operating in other counties,” he continued. “In the absence of that, we will work to alert our colleagues across the commonwealth of Pennsylvania about what has occurred here and to be on the look out.”
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
