Delaware County prosecutors allege paid canvasser tried to register dead people to vote in the 2024 election
False registration attempts are rare. The county’s investigation netted just one fraudulently cast ballot.
Delaware County prosecutors announced charges Thursday against a Collingdale woman who they say repeatedly tried to submit voter registration forms for dead people and against an elderly man who cast ballots in both Florida and Pennsylvania last month.
The charges are the first to come from the county’s investigations into alleged voter fraud and irregularities in the 2024 election. Despite President-elect Donald Trump’s loud and persistent claims of Philadelphia-area voter fraud before the election, few charges have been filed more than a month after ballots were counted.
Delaware County officials said that the election was safe and secure, and that Thursday’s charges should be viewed as evidence that election fraud will be investigated and prosecuted.
The two cases resulted in just one fraudulently cast ballot — that of the man who double-voted — out of more than 330,000 cast in the county, officials stressed.
“Let this pair of cases send a message out there that no matter how busy we are … we are attentive to the signs of fraud,” said Jim Allen, the Delaware County election director.
Charges filed
Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said his department had filed 40 counts, including four felony charges of forgery, against Jennifer Hill, a Collingdale resident who was a paid canvasser for the New Pennsylvania Project, a nonpartisan civic engagement group focused on reaching immigrants, youth, and voters of color.
Hill, prosecutors said, filed more than 300 voter registration forms using an app provided by the Pennsylvania Department of State, but 129 of those were rejected as invalid. Election officials and prosecutors found that she had unsuccessfully sought to register three deceased individuals, including her father and a man who died in her home, they said. Additionally, prosecutors said, she successfully registered a fake person to vote using her grandmother’s name but an incorrect date of birth. No ballot was cast in association with that registration.
She is facing 10 criminal charges associated with each individual, including forgery and tampering with a public record. The felony forgery charges, prosecutors said, could carry up to 10 years in prison each.
False voter registration forms are not uncommon but are generally caught by election officials and rarely lead to fraudulent votes. They are most common when civic engagement groups pay workers to register voters and provide incentives based upon number of voters registered.
Several Pennsylvania counties, including Lancaster and York, announced probes into fraudulent voter registration forms before the Nov. 5 election. As of last month, no charges had been filed as a result of those probes, according to VoteBeat Pennsylvania.
The New Pennsylvania Project Education Fund, which Hill worked for on and off for about a year and a half, does not provide any incentives based on number of registrations filed, CEO Kadida Kenner said.
The organization suspended Hill in September when it learned of the issues and ultimately ended her employment after an internal investigation, Kenner said. Kenner argued the investigation, and lack of fraudulently cast ballots, proved the strength of the election system.
“The process works,” she said. “The election system is secure. The quality control works.”
Additionally, the district attorney’s office filed misdemeanor charges against Philip Moss, an 84-year-old man who prosecutors said voted in person in Florida and also cast a ballot by mail in Delaware County.
Neither defendant appeared to have retained a defense attorney by Thursday evening.
Calls for review
During Thursday’s news conference, Stollsteimer urged the Pennsylvania Department of State to thoroughly review all voter registration applications submitted by Hill and the New Pennsylvania Project.
He said that the department needed to review its app, which allowed a fake person to be registered, and that the legislature should consider altering laws related to voter registration applications to increase security in the system.
“We still have gaps in our system that we need to have the legislature address,” he said.
In a statement, state department officials said any reforms would need to come from the legislature.
“The Department takes allegations of fraudulent voter registration seriously and works with law enforcement across the Commonwealth to ensure our registration process is safe, free, fair, and secure,” the statement said.