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 responsible for submitting the registrations were believed to be active in two other counties. She did not name those counties but said her investigators had reached out to them.
Registration complaints
Friday’s press conference comes less than a week after administrators of a nonpartisan voter registration program at Franklin & Marshall College said they were concerned that students’ applications were not being acted on by the county.
Their complaints drew the attention of Secretary of State Al Schmidt, who ordered the countyto provide more information about the status of registrations.
The F&M officials also pointed to the experience of a student who was denied a mail-in ballot after he presented an out-of-state ID. The student had been registered since 2022. His registration was canceled but reinstated days later after the student provided verification that his registration in his home state had been canceled. Pennsylvania law does not require college student or any other registration applicants to prove that any prior registrations have been canceled.