Suspicious voter registration forms in Pennsylvania linked to an Arizona city councilman’s company • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

Two Pennsylvania counties have identified an Arizona-based company as the source of thousands of last-minute voter registration applications they are investigating.

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

In Monroe County, about 30 forms that the company was “responsible for filing,” including mail-in ballots, were “irregular” and included what the District Attorney’s Office described in a Facebook post as some that were “fraudulent because they were not authorized. by the persons named as applicants.”

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

York County Chief Clerk Greg Monskie confirmed to Votebeat on Wednesday that Field+Media Corps submitted the forms the county is investigating. Monskie said the company submitted the forms on behalf of the Everybody Votes campaign, a national nonprofit voter registration organization.

Everybody Votes said in a statement that the company has not been contacted by officials in Lancaster, York or Monroe counties about ongoing investigations, but that if contacted it would help resolve any issues with the forms.

“Our partners are working hard to ensure that all forms collected comply with all rules and regulations,” the statement said.

In a news release Wednesday, the county said that of the 3,087 applications it reviewed, it determined that approximately 47% were legitimate, 29% had incomplete information and 24% were “undergoing further review” by the York County district attorney.

Heredia told Votebeat that the company has not heard from county officials in Pennsylvania or received any information about problems with the forms it filed there, but he said the company would fully cooperate with any investigation in Pennsylvania.

The company’s voter registration efforts were noticed in Arizona

Heredia has been a councilor in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb with about half a million residents, since 2017. He was re-elected in July. Before joining the council, he was a longtime leader of Mi Familia Vota, a prominent Latino voter advocacy group, according to his LinkedIn profile. In 2017, he briefly served as community relations manager for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

Field+Media Corps also conducts voter registration drives for clients in Arizona. Last year, both Navajo and Mohave counties flagged voter registration forms from the company and sent them to the Arizona Attorney General’s office for investigation, office spokesman Richie Taylor confirmed to Votebeat on Thursday.

Taylor said Maricopa County prosecutors took the lead in the investigation because the forms were initially filed there before being sent to Navajo and Mohave. The Maricopa County District Attorney’s Office confirmed that the office has opened a related investigation, but could not immediately provide more details.

Asked about the investigations in Pennsylvania and Arizona, Heredia said the company trains employees to fill out forms accurately. When asked about the characterization of some submitted forms as fraudulent, Heredia said Field+Media Corps has a zero-tolerance policy for employees who submit fraudulent forms.

He said the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office contacted his company last year regarding an investigation into two prospects the company employed. Field+Media Corps has laid off these two employees, Heredia said.

Field+Media Corps’ customers or past customers in Arizona include several prominent voter advocacy groups in Arizona, including LUCHA, Chispa AZ and CPLC Action Fund, according to the company’s website.

This election cycle, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has caught FieldCorps, the parent company of Field+Media Corps, filing a high percentage of incomplete or inaccurate forms, office spokesperson Sierra Ciaramella confirmed Wednesday.

Heredia said he is in regular contact with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and has been for years, ever since he started doing this work in Arizona. He said he is open to ways the company can file more accurate forms and that his company has a good working relationship with the county.

Arizona has long faced problems with incomplete, inaccurate and potentially fraudulent voter registration forms. A Votebeat analysis earlier this year found that the problem is removing potentially eligible voters from the voter rolls just ahead of the state’s voter registration deadlines.

When county officials receive an incomplete or incorrect form, county employees contact voters to complete the forms. If they cannot do this, the registration will not be processed.

False claims emerge as Pennsylvania continues its investigation

Heredia noted that his company reviews forms collected by Pennsylvania workers before they submit them, to check for things like similar signatures on multiple forms. But even if they discover problems, they must report them under state law.

Heredia confirmed that his company was doing voter registration on behalf of Everybody Votes. He said his company worked in Pennsylvania for more than five months leading up to the registration deadline, filing forms virtually every week. Election officials did not notify the company of any problems with their forms during that period, he said.

His company no longer has employees in the state now that the voter registration deadline has passed, he said.

Pennsylvania is a hotly contested swing state, widely seen as key to the presidential race, and its elections are under heavy national scrutiny.

Former President Donald Trump alluded to the counties’ announcements in social media posts this week, falsely claiming that counterfeit ballots had been found in Pennsylvania. Election experts pushed back, noting that the applications had been flagged as potentially problematic by election officials, a sign that the system is working and that ballots were not involved.

In a third Pennsylvania county under investigation, Lancaster County, officials have declined to identify the group or individual who submitted the 2,500 forms they are investigating. District Attorney Heather Adams, a Republican, announced at a news conference last week that roughly 60% of the applications her investigators have reviewed so far were reportedly fraudulent, while others were legitimate. She has since described “hundreds” of the applications as fraudulent, but has not given an exact number or announced criminal charges in connection with the investigation.

Adams declined to comment on whether Field+Media Corps had submitted the applications.

Mancuso of Monroe County wrote on Facebook that his office is working with investigators from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and others as they continue the investigation.

The Pennsylvania Department of State emphasized in a statement Wednesday evening that York and Lancaster counties had identified the potential irregularities only in voter registration applications, which they did not process — not in voting applications or returned ballots.

“Counties’ process to identify and investigate these potentially fraudulent voter registration applications shows that the safeguards built into our election system are working,” said Department of State spokesperson Geoff Morrow.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at (email protected).