registration

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A yearlong investigation into suspected fraudulent voter registration forms submitted ahead of last year’s presidential election produced criminal charges Friday against six street canvassers and the man who led their work in Pennsylvania.

The allegations of fraud appeared to be motivated by the defendants’ desire to make money and keep their jobs and was not an effort to influence the election results, said Pennsylvania Atty Gen. Dave Sunday.

Guillermo Sainz, 33, described by prosecutors as the director of a company’s 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.

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.

“We 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,” Sunday said in a news release. Prosecutors said the forms included all party affiliations.

In a court affidavit filed with the criminal charges on Friday, investigators said Sainz, an employee of Field+Media Corps, “instituted 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.”

The chief executive of Field+Media Corps, based in Mesa, Ariz., 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.

Field+Media was funded by Everybody Votes, an effort to improve voter registration rates in communities of color. The affidavit said Everybody Votes “fully cooperated” with the investigation and noted its contract with Field+Media prohibited payments on a per-registration basis.

“The investigation confirmed that we hold our partners to the highest standards of quality control when collecting, handling and delivering voter registration applications,” Everybody Votes said in a statement emailed by a spokesperson.

Sainz, who managed Pennsylvania operations from May to October 2024, is accused of paying canvassers based on how many signatures they collected. The police affidavit said Sainz told agents with the attorney general’s office earlier this month he was unaware of any canvassers paid extra hours if they reached a target number of forms.

“Sainz had to be asked the question multiple times before he stated he was not aware of this and that ‘everyone was an hourly worker,’ ” investigators wrote.

One canvasser said she created fake forms to boost her pay and believed others did, too, according to the police affidavit. Another told investigators that most of the registration forms he collected were “not real.” A third reported that when she realized she was not going to reach a daily quota, “she would make up names and information,” police wrote, “due to fear of losing her job.”

The investigation began in late October 2024, when election workers in Lancaster flagged about 2,500 voter registration forms for potential fraud. Authorities said they appeared to contain false names, suspicious handwriting, questionable signatures, incorrect addresses and other problematic details.

In a separate but related investigation, authorities in Monroe County late Friday filed voter registration fraud charges against three canvassers who worked for Field+Media Corps last year. All three defendants were charged with forgery, perjury, unsworn falsification, tampering with public records, identity theft and election law violations.

The suggestion of criminal activity related to the election came as the battleground state was considered pivotal to the presidential election, and then-candidate Donald Trump seized on the news. At a campaign event, he declared there was “cheating” involving “2,600” votes. The actual issue in Lancaster was about 2,500 suspected fraudulent voter registration forms, not ballots or votes.

Scolforo writes for the Associated Press.

Attorney General Pam Bondi (L) looks on as President Donald Trump (R) prepares to speak at the religious liberty commission at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., on Monday, September 8, 2025. On Thursday, she announced lawsuits against six states to force them to hand over their voter registartion lists. Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 26 (UPI) — The Trump administration is suing six Democratic-led states to force them to hand over their voter registration lists, further raising concerns about alleged efforts by the Trump administration to undermine elections.

The Justice Department announced the lawsuits against California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania on Thursday, about 10 days after it sued Oregon and Maine, seeking the same information. Of the eight states, all but one have a Democratic governor.

“Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, citing public information, at least 27 states have been asked for copies of their voter registration lists.

While questioning states about election administration is not uncommon, requesting voter registration databases from a mass of states is unprecedented, the nonpartisan law and policy institute at NYU Law said.

“Another step of the Trump administration’s concerted strategy to undermine elections: The Justice Department is suing eight states to acquire their voter files,” the center said on X.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for Michigan said among the information the federal government would receive in the voter lists is private data, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers as well as personally identifiable information.

“I told them they can’t have it,” she said in a statement, calling the Trump administration lawsuit “illegal” and an “unconstitutional power grab.”

“This kind of request is not normal. Why is this happening now? Why does the federal government want access to everyone’s personal information? I have asked them these questions. Other secretaries of state — both Democrats and Republicans — have also asked them these questions. They refuse to give us a straight answer.”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber chastised the Justice Department for trying to use the courts to “erode” the rights of her citizens by trying to “intimidate” state officials with a lawsuit to hand over their information.

“The lawsuit and intentions behind it are a blatant overreach by the federal government,” she said in a statement.

She said she is mandated by state law to protect the information of Californians, while accusing the Justice Department of failing to explain the legal authority it’s using to justify its demands.

“The sensitive data of California citizens should not be used as a political tool to undermine the public trust and integrity of elections,” she said.

July 3 (UPI) — The government of President Dina Boluarte has extended Peru’s small-scale mining formalization program through December, even as doubts persist more than a decade after its launch and experts warn that criminal organizations have exploited the system.

According to official figures from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, just 2,108 of the 86,000 miners enrolled in the Integral Registry for Mining Formalization, or REINFO, had completed the process as of November 2024 — a rate of only 2.4%.

REINFO was launched as part of a government effort to contain the unchecked growth of informal and illegal mining. It gave registered miners a deadline to submit documents, meet environmental and labor standards and transition to legal operations. But after four extensions, the process has failed to deliver lasting results.

Energy and Mines Minister Jorge Montero said the situation could improve in the coming months. He noted that another 5% of registered miners are close to completing the formalization process, and added that the government aims to mediate agreements between concession holders and roughly 15,000 small-scale miners who are working informally on those sites.

But experts say repeated deadline extensions have turned the program into a legal gray area that criminal groups exploit.

“We’re talking about a failed system by every measure,” Mónica Muñoz-Nájar, an economist with the Red de Estudios para el Desarrollo, said in an interview with RPP. She pointed to the low rate of formalization and the expansion of informal mining.

“Forty-four percent of the gold Peru exports comes from illegal mining, which has become more profitable than drug trafficking. It’s estimated that illegal mining generates $12 billion a year,” she said.

One of the strongest criticisms of REINFO comes from the National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy. Its president, Julia Torreblanca, said the registry has become a “shield for illegality” and that its indiscriminate extensions distort the market by protecting individuals who have no intention of following the law or meeting formalization requirements.

A growing concern, however, is the infiltration of organized crime into informal mining zones operating under REINFO’s protection. Organizations such as the Observatory of Illegal Mining and advocacy group DAR have warned that criminal networks use the registry to operate unregulated mining fronts, traffic illegal gold, transport chemical supplies and even facilitate human trafficking and forced labor.

These warnings align with reports from the National Police, who have identified criminal networks in regions including Madre de Dios, Puno and La Libertad. Authorities say these groups use informal mining concessions to conceal a range of illegal activities, including fuel smuggling, arms trafficking and the export of gold to international markets.

In early May, police reported the kidnapping and murder of 13 private security guards employed by a contractor linked to the Poderosa mining company in the Pataz region. Authorities said the bodies showed signs of torture and were found bound and unclothed — a sign of the extreme violence used by criminal gangs tied to illegal mining.

The case marked a critical moment in Peru, underscoring the violence and criminal networks that operate alongside illegal mining in the Andes and the direct threat they pose to people working in the region.

A recent report from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru warns that illegal mining is one of the most destructive activities environmentally, socially and economically.

It found that in regions like Madre de Dios, up to 50,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed. The state collected about $12,000 in taxes, compared with an estimated $565 million in extracted gold. Estimated tax evasion ranges from $85 million to $168 million.

May 28 (UPI) — The Trump administration is suing North Carolina and the state’s Board of Elections on accusations of maintaining voter registration records that include voters who did not provide required identifying information, in violation of federal law.

The Justice Department filed the lawsuit Tuesday, alleging the defendants violated the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by using a state voter registration form that did not “explicitly require” a voter to provide a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number.

Those who filled out the form, without providing the identifying information, were then added to the voter registration record.

HAVA was sweeping voter reform legislation that included updated voter identification procedures. Under the law, a voter registration application must include either the applicant’s driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.

The lawsuit alleges that a “significant number” of North Carolina voters who did not provide the required identifying information were registered to vote by election officials.

“Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in North Carolina are conducted fairly, accurately and without fraud,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “The Department of Justice will not hesitate to file suit against jurisdictions that maintain inaccurate voter registration rolls in violation of federal voting laws.”

The lawsuit comes after Jefferson Griffin, a Republican Court of Appeals judge, finally conceded defeat to his Democratic opponent for North Carolina’s state Supreme Court seat earlier this month, following six months of litigation over the legality of tens of thousands of votes cast in the election.

Griffin lost to Associate Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes and sought to have some 60,000 ballots in six Democratic-leaning counties rejected on the same grounds that the Justice Department cited in its lawsuit on Wednesday — the ballots were cast by voters, mostly in the military or overseas, who did not provide photo ID or an ID exception form.

Democrats accused him of attempting to steal the election, and the state’s high court ruled to uphold the validity of the votes cast.

With Riggs’ victory, the state’s Supreme Court maintains a 5-2 Republican majority.