A yearlong investigation into suspected fraudulent voter registration forms submitted ahead of last year\u2019s presidential election produced criminal charges Friday against six street canvassers and the man who led their work in Pennsylvania.\n<\/p>\n
The allegations of fraud appeared to be motivated by the defendants\u2019 desire to make money and keep their jobs and was not an effort to influence the election results, said Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, a Republican.\n<\/p>\n
Guillermo Sainz, 33, described by prosecutors as the director of a company\u2019s registration drives in Pennsylvania, was charged with three counts of solicitation of registration, a state law that prohibits offering money to reach registration quotas. A message seeking comment was left on a number associated with Sainz, who lives in Arizona. He did not have a lawyer listed in court records.\n<\/p>\n
The six canvassers are charged with unsworn falsification, tampering with public records, forgery and violations of Pennsylvania election law. The charges relate to activities in three Republican-leaning Pennsylvania counties: York, Lancaster and Berks.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are confident that the motive behind these crimes was personal financial gain, and not a conspiracy or organized effort to tip any election for any one candidate or party,\u201d Sunday said in a news release. Prosecutors said the forms included all party affiliations.\n<\/p>\n
In a court affidavit filed with the criminal charges on Friday, investigators said Sainz, an employee of Field+Media Corps, \u201cinstituted unlawful financial incentives and pressures in his push to meet company goals to maintain funding which in turn spurred some canvassers to create and submit fake forms to earn more money.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The chief executive of Field+Media Corps, based in Mesa, Arizona, said last year the company was proud of its work to expand voting but had no information about problematic registration forms. A message seeking comment was left Friday for the CEO, Francisco Heredia. The Field+Media Corps website did not appear to be operative.\n<\/p>\n
Field+Media was funded by Everybody Votes, an effort to improve voter registration rates in communities of color. The affidavit said Everybody Votes \u201cfully cooperated\u201d with the investigation and noted its contract with Field+Media prohibited payments on a per-registration basis.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThe investigation confirmed that we hold our partners to the highest standards of quality control when collecting, handling and delivering voter registration applications,\u201d Everybody Votes said in a statement e-mailed by a spokesperson.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A yearlong investigation into suspected fraudulent voter registration forms submitted ahead of last year\u2019s presidential election produced criminal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2955,11227,28,4601,30,29],"class_list":["post-14874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-election-fraud","tag-pa-voter-registration","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-attorney-general","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}