LANCASTER, Pa. — Officials provided an update about the extent of a voter registration fraud investigation in Lancaster County.
On Monday, the eve of the election, the county's Board of Elections provided an update from the District Attorney's office.
So far, 57% of the 2,500 voter registration applications turned over to the DA have been verified as legitimate.
17% of the applications have been determined to be fraudulent and another 26% are still under investigation.
“I will say a lot of the ones in the category, the 26%, a good number of those are still suspected of being fraud but it’s a very painstaking process to go through those," said Lancaster County Commissioner Ray D'Agostino (R).
The update comes just one day after former President Donald Trump made a false claim about the county’s investigation at his Sunday rally at the Lancaster Airport.
"In Lancaster, they found 2,600 ballots, all done in by the same hand, in other words, the same exact penmanship, the same hand, the same everything," Trump stated. "It was done by the same pen, the same exact pen.”
Commissioner Alice Yoder (D) called out the former president’s claim at Monday's meeting.
“This statement is not true," said Yoder. "The main piece there is he mentioned ballots which gets people confused from a public standpoint. They were voter registration applications.”
The number 2,600 is also incorrect. There was a batch of 2,500 applications under investigation in Lancaster County.
The Elections Board also praised the work of the county’s elections staff and reassured voters on the eve of the Election.
“They were the ones that caught it and showed the system works," said Yoder. "There’s no reason to think the election is not safe and secure.”
Lancaster County is not the only county in Pennsylvania dealing with this kind of investigation. York, Monroe, and Berks Counties also continue to look into potentially fraudulent registration applications.
Field+Media Corps., an Arizona-based consulting firm, has been linked to the issues in York and Monroe Counties. Lancaster County's Elections Board would not confirm on Monday that the group is associated with their investigation.
The Field+Media Corps. website was shut down late last week.
Polls open at 7:00 a.m. on Nov. 5.