The discovery of hundreds of fraudulent voter registration forms in Pennsylvania is fueling fears about election integrity in the key battleground state. 

During a press conference on Friday, the vice chairman of the Lancaster County board of commissioners, Ray D’Agostino, said election officials found “apparent incidents of attempted voter registration fraud” in the Republican-leaning county.

Mr. D’Agostino shared that “as many as 2,500” voter registration forms appeared to be fraudulent and were discovered during a routine review process. An investigation into the forms has determined that roughly 60 percent of the 2,500 applications were fraudulent, and not all of them had been reviewed by the time of the press conference.

While the apparent plot to cast fraudulent votes appears to have been foiled, it is stoking fears on social media about fraud in the upcoming election. The director for media and public relations at the conservative Heritage Foundation, Harrison Fields, shared the news on X and wrote, “SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.”

The chairman of the organization Students for Trump, Ryan Fournier, asked, “What’s going on in Pennsylvania?”

“It is now being reported that thousands of fake ballots were intercepted and stopped from being processed. Don’t ever tell me that voter fraud does not exist. They will do anything to stop Donald J. Trump from reclaiming the White House,” he added. 

A Pennsylvania state lawmaker, Barb Gleim, urged people to be “vigilant across the state” in the wake of the discovery of the fraudulent applications. In a post on X, she wrote, “Every legal US citizen vote matters and so does the integrity of our elections.”

The Republican leader of Pennsylvania’s house, Brian Cutler, said in a statement, “Pennsylvanians have demanded our elections be secure, safe, and accurate, and I applaud the work by the Lancaster County Board of Elections and the district attorney’s office to catch and root out fraud in our election process.”

“This investigation serves as a stark reminder of the lengths criminals are willing to go to try and impact our electoral process,” he added. 

Local officials at the press conference shared limited information about the case, as there is an ongoing investigation. 

The Lancaster district attorney, Heather Adams, told reporters at the press conference that election employees noticed that “numerous applications appeared to have the same handwriting, were filled out on the same day, and some were previously registered voters, and the signatures on file did not match the signatures on the applications.”

However, she said the forms suspected of being fraudulent appear to be part of a “large scale canvassing operation for voter registration that date[s] back to June,” but most of the applications were dated after August 15.

Ms. Adams said not all of the applications were fraudulent, and there were forms that were filled out legitimately. She also said there appeared to be an “organized effort” behind the applications, and vowed officials would look into “who exactly participated in it and how far up it goes.” The district attorney shared that “at least two other counties” received similar applications, but declined to name the other counties. 

Meanwhile, Mr. D’Agostino said the effort did not “appear” to affect one particular party. Ms. Adams suggested it would not “matter” if the registration forms were for one party or another, as their existence “increases the chance that we’re gonna have voter fraud.”

She added: “Thankfully, we stopped part one. That was getting a voter on the books that, perhaps, shouldn’t have been. But part two is whether or not anyone intended to turn that application into a fraudulent vote. And for all intents and purposes, that’s been stopped.”

During the press conference, officials sought to reassure voters about the integrity of upcoming elections by noting election employees caught the fraudulent applications during a routine review process and before votes could have been cast.