On November 8, 2022, a rural polling place is seen in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Branden Eastwood/AFP via Getty Images

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Branden Eastwood/AFP via Getty Images

Officials in Lancaster County in the swing state of Pennsylvania say they have identified hundreds of potentially fraudulent voter registration applications.

“Suspected fraudulent voter registration forms were delivered to the elections office in two batches on or around the filing deadline,” the board said in a statement Friday. “There are approximately 2,500 total voter registration applications in these two batches.”

It is unclear how many of the applications in the two batches would be fraudulent.

In its statement, the board emphasized that the provincial elections are secure and that identifying possible fraud indicates that the systems were ‘working’. Republican-leaning Lancaster County has more than 360,000 registered voters.

The statement said “concerns were raised during staff’s normal process of reviewing and entering applications into (a state database) and law enforcement was alerted.”

At a news conference Friday with board members, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said numerous applications appeared to have the same handwriting and that other details, such as addresses, appeared to be incorrect on some applications.

Adams said the investigation is ongoing and would not comment on who issued the possibly fraudulent forms.

NPR has previously reported that fraudulent signatures have sometimes been found in paid recruitment activities.

Friday’s announcement followed what officials in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County said Thursday was a hoax video circulating on social media showing election workers in the county destroying ballots. And across the country, in Colorado’s Mesa County, there was news Thursday of another isolated incident: an investigation into alleged voter fraud involving about a dozen ballots.