Details about a continuing investigation revealed by a Republican county commissioner at an election board meeting on Monday undercut claims made by former President Donald J. Trump and others about widespread voter fraud in Lancaster County, Pa.
The commissioner, Ray D’Agostino, said that 17 percent of voter registration forms that had been flagged as suspicious there had been found to be “fraudulent,” and that 26 percent of the suspicious forms were still being reviewed.
The county would not give the total number of registration forms at issue.
But the county was clear that there was no evidence of fraudulent ballots, a fact that stood in stark contrast to a claim made by Mr. Trump at a Sunday rally that “they found 2,600 ballots” — not voter registration forms — “all done by the same hand” in Lancaster County. Mr. Trump’s remarks at the rally, in Lititz, Pa., built on a series of claims that he made last week in speeches and on social media.
The episode, which is still under investigation, is quickly becoming central to claims by Trump and his allies that Democrats are trying to steal 19 electoral votes in a crucial battleground state.
“They’ve already started cheating in Lancaster,” Mr. Trump said a few days earlier, at a rally in Allentown, Pa.
There have been no reports of fraudulent ballots in Lancaster County.
A spokesman for the county said that the number of forms at issue was “as many as 2,500” but declined to be more specific.
The office of the Lancaster County district attorney, Heather Adams, said last week that it had found “hundreds” of forms to be fraudulent.
Also last week, the state attorney general announced an investigation into potentially fraudulent voter registration forms that were intercepted by county officials in Lancaster, York, Berks, and Monroe Counties. The attorney general’s office is working with county authorities on the investigation; to date, no charges have been filed.
Investigations into voter registration fraud, often prompted by errors made by contractors who are hired by campaigns and grass-roots organizations to register voters, have been a common feature of recent elections in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. But it is rare for those investigations to result in charges.
York and Berks Counties, like Lancaster, are still in the process of reviewing large batches of registration forms. So far, neither of those counties has declared any of the forms to be fraudulent.
In Monroe County, District Attorney Mike Mancuso announced in a social media post on Friday that his office had found 16 fraudulent voter registration forms. The forms, he said, contained “forged signatures, often with incorrect or incomplete identifying information.”
Mr. Mancuso also said in the post that two mail-in ballots in his county had been “apparently stolen,” with “the perpetrators unsuccessfully attempting to cast the ballots.”
A spokesman for the office of the York County district attorney said on Monday that it was not investigating any ballots as potentially fraudulent.
A person familiar with the Monroe County investigation said a canvasser responsible for filling out at least some of the allegedly fraudulent registration forms there had been identified and questioned.
Officials in Monroe and York Counties have said that a political consulting firm based in Arizona, Field+Media Corps, sent the suspicious voter registration forms to their elections offices. In Arizona, the company has drawn scrutiny from state and county attorneys for similar issues. The company has worked for Democratic candidates and progressive causes in Arizona and elsewhere.
Early last year, the office of the Maricopa County attorney opened an investigation into incomplete or inaccurate voter registration forms submitted by Field+Media. Two employees of the company were fired as a result, according to Votebeat, which first reported the investigations.
Richie Taylor, a spokesman for the Arizona attorney general’s office, said the inquiry, which is continuing, concerned 24 incomplete or inaccurate voter registrations.
Mr. Taylor said his office had received no complaints about the company this year.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder, said his office had in the past “admonished” Field+Media, which delivered a large batch of registrations in Maricopa last month, “to please, please, please submit better voter registration forms, to please do more quality control.”
The company is also known as FieldCorps LLC. In an interview, its chief executive and co-owner, Francisco Heredia, said that the company had worked in Pennsylvania for nearly six months, that it had canvassed in Lancaster County, and that it had used more than 100 canvassers. It was hired by the Everybody Votes Campaign, an organization that says it has registered more than five million voters. A spokesman for E.V.C. confirmed Field+Media’s role.
“FieldCorps is committed to registering votes and doing so with integrity,” said Jon L. Cochran, a lawyer in Philadelphia representing FieldCorps. “And the company is fully cooperating with investigators.”
Neither E.V.C. nor Mr. Heredia would say whether Field+Media had canvassed in other states during this election cycle. The company pays its canvassers by the hour, not per registration, Mr. Heredia said, adding that any form that is fully filled out is delivered to county offices without further review.
Kathy Boockvar, who was in charge of Pennsylvania’s election system as secretary of state in 2020, said it was not unusual to see paid canvassers turning in large batches of error-ridden voter registration forms, whether because of deadline pressures, financial incentives or deficiencies in quality control and employee oversight.
A different canvassing company working on behalf of progressive groups to register voters drew scrutiny from Pennsylvania authorities during the 2016 election cycle, but no charges were ultimately filed.
In a social media post last month, Michael Whatley, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the committee had sent an “on-the-ground election integrity team” to help county officials in Lancaster “prevent fraudulent registrations from being processed.”
Neither the county nor the R.N.C. responded to questions about the team’s role.
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