Cambria County Election Officials Reject Batch of Fraudulent Voter Registration Applications; PA County Finds 21 Voter Registration Requests To Be Fraudulent Despite State Guidance That Would Have Accepted Them

Cambria County election officials reject batch of fraudulent voter registration applications:

The Cambria County Election Board rejected 21 voter registration applications during Thursday’s meeting after a Cambria County District Attorney’s Office-led investigation revealed the batch of forms was fraudulent, officials said.

“Our job is to promote the integrity of our elections, and this is an example of what we need to do,” said Cambria County President Commissioner Scott Hunt, a member of the Election Board.

The 21 forms were allegedly submitted by an undisclosed group following a registration event.

When Cambria County Director of Elections Maryann Dillon entered the documents into the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE system, for validation, all were flagged.

County Solicitor Ronald Repak said that could have been due to a wrong Social Security number, an address or another piece of information on the form not matching what is on file. When that happens, a letter is generated and sent to the address listed for validation, but in this case every letter came back unclaimed.

Dillon reported the issues to the board for further review, and the matter was presented to the Cambria County District Attorney’s Office, which mobilized detectives to investigate.

“We wanted to go above and beyond to make sure there wasn’t a mix-up,” Commissioner Keith Rager said.

District Attorney Greg Neugebauer said detectives went to the addresses listed on the applications and turned their findings over to the election board.

The investigation determined that the information on the batch of forms was not accurate, Repak said, with some residents unaware a form had been filed on their behalf or no one by the listed name residing at the home. —>READ MORE HERE

PA County Finds 21 Voter Registration Requests To Be Fraudulent Despite State Guidance That Would Have Accepted Them:

The move to deny the fraudulent ballot requests may run afoul of a bizarre directive the Pennsylvania Department of State has given to counties.

ambria County, Pennsylvania, has discovered and thrown out 21 fraudulent voter registration requests, according to county Solicitor Ronald Repak.

The requests were received in the mail at the county election office in July, Repak told The Federalist. The first hint that something was amiss was that the requests all arrived in the county mail on the same day.

When a county receives a voter registration request, election workers compare the information on the request form with state data to verify the requester’s identity. They match the last four digits of the Social Security number with the name on the request, or match the driver’s license number and name. This verification is a requirement of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Cambria County election workers found each of these voter registration requests had something wrong with it. They found the names and numbers provided did not match the databases, and in some cases the requester had left the spaces for the Social Security number or driver’s license number blank, leaving workers with no numbers to match and no way to verify the requester’s identity, Repak said. In some cases, there was no signature, or the address did not match the name.

The county sent letters to the addresses on the forms informing applicants that the county needed more information before it could register the requester for voting, but the county did not hear back from any of the 21 applicants.

The move to deny the ballot requests may run afoul of the Pennsylvania Department of State’s bizarre directive given to counties that instructs, “Pennsylvania and federal law are clear that voter registrations may not be rejected based solely on a non-match between the applicants’ identifying numbers on their application, and the comparison database numbers.”

“HAVA’s data comparison process ‘was intended as an administrative safeguard “for storing and managing the official list of registered voters” and not as a restriction on voter eligibility,’” the directive reads.

“Counties must ensure their procedures comply with state and federal law, which means that if there is no independent grounds to reject a voter registration application other than a non-match, the application may not be rejected and must be processed like all other applications,” the directive reads. —>READ MORE HERE

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