Only 17% of the roughly 2,500 voter registration applications the Lancaster County district attorney was reviewing have been found fraudulent so far, county officials said Monday. Another 26% are still under review and 57% have been verified as legitimate applications.

Lancaster County announced last month that it was reviewing two batches of voter registration applications submitted just before the voter registration deadline that showed signs of fraud.

In many ways, the province’s announced investigation proved that the system’s anti-fraud controls were working. But it has still fueled disinformation about the Pennsylvania election. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that the applications were in fact counterfeit ballots.

He walked back that claim at a meeting last weekend, claiming the county had found “2,600 ballots, all done by the same hand.”

Ann Yoder, a Democrat on the Lancaster Board of Elections, criticized Trump for the false characterization during Monday’s meeting.

“There is no reason to believe the election is not secure,” she said.

Board Chairman Josh Parsons, a Republican, jumped to Trump’s defense, arguing that it is easy to misspeak and call ballots for voter registration applications.

Law enforcement officials have been investigating fraudulent voter registration forms in Berks, Lancaster, Monroe and York counties. According to Votebeat, at least some of these forms are linked to Field+Media Corps, an Arizona-based company that has also been investigated by law enforcement in that state for bad forms.

At Monday’s Board of Elections meeting, Commissioner Ray D’Agostino, a Republican, presented data provided by the local prosecutor’s office. He noted that the number of fraudulent applications could change as the final 26% of ballots were reviewed.

But the announcement shows that the scale of the bad shapes is much smaller than Trump and his allies have suggested — in the hundreds rather than in the thousands.

The Mesa, Arizona-based Field+Media Corps, which runs voter registration and outreach programs, is led by Francisco Heredia, a city councilman and longtime voting activist in Arizona.

Irregularities included voters registering the names of dead people and possibly hundreds of duplicate registrations.

In a Facebook post last Tuesday, the Monroe County District Attorney’s office wrote that 30 forms that Field+Media Corps was “responsible for filing,” including mail-in ballots, were “fraudulent because they were not authorized by the individuals who were named as applicants. .”

District Attorney Mike Mancuso wrote in the post: “In at least one example, the named applicant is actually deceased.” He also said several of the forms he described as fraudulent had been traced to a specific person.

Votebeat reported that York County Chief Clerk Greg Monskie confirmed that the forms the county is investigating were submitted by Field+Media Corps.

According to Votebeat, the province said in a news release on Wednesday that 3,087 applications were being processed.

The press release added that Field+Media Corps submitted the forms on behalf of the Everybody Votes campaign, a national nonprofit voter registration organization.

Everybody Votes, also known as the Voter Registration Project, is a voter mobilization group targeting African American, Latino, Native American, low-income and other voter groups likely to lean left of center, according to the watchdog group Influence Watch. The organization identifies groups related to public policy issues.

Heredia, of Mesa, is a registered Democrat, according to Arizona Central, which includes content from the Arizona Republic and other media outlets in the state.

In a statement, the Everybody Votes Campaign said it had not been contacted by officials in Lancaster, York or Monroe counties about an ongoing investigation, and that they had no information about the forms in question.

“If contacted, we plan to work with our partners and election officials to quickly resolve any discrepancies and ensure that all eligible registrants have the opportunity to vote next week,” the campaign wrote in the statement.