Suspicious Pennsylvania voter registration forms linked to Arizona City Council firm • 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.

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

In Monroe County, about 30 forms that the company was “responsible for submitting,” including absentee ballot applications, were “irregular” and included some that the district attorney's office described in a Facebook post as “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 that several of the forms he described as fraudulent had been traced to a specific individual.

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 would assist in resolving any issues with the forms if contacted.

“Our partners work diligently 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 reviewed, about 47% were found to be legitimate, 29% contained incomplete information and 24% were subject to “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 filed there, but said the company will fully cooperate with any investigations in Pennsylvania.

The company's voter registration efforts were reported in Arizona

Heredia has been a city 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 served for years as chairman of Mi Familia Vota, a prominent advocacy group for Latino voters, 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 runs voter registration campaigns for clients in Arizona. Last year, both Navajo and Mohave counties flagged the company's voter registration forms 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 forwarded to Navajo and Mohave. The Maricopa County District Attorney's Office confirmed that the office had opened an investigation into the matter, but could not immediately provide further details.

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

He said the Maricopa County District Attorney's Office contacted his firm last year in connection with an investigation into two touts employed by the firm. Field+Media Corps fired those two workers, Heredia said.

Field+Media Corps' Arizona clients or former clients include several prominent Arizona voter groups, including LUCHA, Chispa AZ and CPLC Action Fund, according to the company's website.

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

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

Arizona has long faced issues with incomplete, inaccurate and potentially fraudulent voter registration forms. A Votebeat analysis earlier this year found that the problem is causing potential voters to be removed from voter rolls just before the state's voter registration deadlines.

If county officials receive an incomplete or inaccurate form, county staff will contact voters to complete the forms. If this is not possible, the registration will not be processed.

As Pennsylvania continues to investigate, false allegations are emerging

Heredia noted that his company reviews forms collected from Pennsylvania workers before submission, for example to check for similar signatures on multiple forms. But even if they discover problems, state law requires them to report them.

Heredia confirmed that his company conducted voter registration on behalf of Everybody Votes. He said his company worked in Pennsylvania for more than five months before the registration deadline, submitting forms almost every two weeks. Election officials did not report any problems with their forms to the company during that period, he said.

His company no longer has any workers in the state after the voter registration deadline, he said.

Pennsylvania is a hotly contested swing state that is widely seen as key to the presidential race and whose elections are closely watched nationally.

Former President Donald Trump alluded to county announcements in social media posts this week, falsely claiming that fraudulent ballots had been found in Pennsylvania. Election experts disagreed, pointing out that the applications were flagged by election officials as potentially problematic, a sign that the system was working, and that they were not ballots.

In Lancaster County, a third Pennsylvania county to conduct an investigation, officials have declined to name the group or individual that submitted the 2,500 forms they are investigating. District Attorney Heather Adams, a Republican, announced at a news conference last week that about 60% of the applications her investigators have reviewed so far were allegedly fraudulent, while others were legitimate. It has since described “hundreds” of the applications as fraudulent, but did not provide an exact number or announce any criminal charges related to the investigation.

Adams declined to comment on whether Field+Media Corps filed 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 only identified the potential irregularities on voter registration applications that they were not processing – not election applications or returned ballots.

“Counties’ process of flagging and investigating these potentially fraudulent voter registration applications demonstrates that the security measures built into our election system are working,” said State Department spokesman Geoff Morrow.

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