Two Pennsylvania counties have identified an Arizona-based company as the source of thousands of last-minute voter registration applications that they are investigating.
The company, Field+Media Corps, which conducts voter registration and outreach programs, is run by Francisco Heredia, a Mesa councilman and a longtime voting activist in Arizona.
In Monroe County, around 30 forms the company was “responsible for submitting,” which also included mail ballot applications, were “irregular” and included what the District Attorney’s Office described in a Facebook post as several that were “fraudulent as they were not authorized by the persons named as applicants.”
“In at least one example, the named applicant is in fact 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 Wednesday that Field+Media Corps submitted the forms that the county is investigating. Monskie said the company submitted the forms on behalf of the Everybody Votes campaign, a national nonprofit voter registration organization….
Heredia has been a councilman in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb of about a half million people, since 2017. He was reelected in July. Before joining the council, he was for years a leader of Mi Familia Vota, a prominent Latino voter advocacy group, according to his LinkedIn profile. For a short period in 2017, he was the community relations manager for the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
Field+Media Corps operates voter registration drives for clients in Arizona, too. 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 spokesperson Richie Taylor confirmed to Votebeat Thursday.
Taylor said that Maricopa County prosecutors took the lead on investigating, because the forms were initially submitted there before being sent on to Navajo and Mohave. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office confirmed the office opened a related investigation, but was unable to immediately provide more detail.
Asked about the Pennsylvania and Arizona investigations, Heredia said the company trains workers 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 workers who submit fraudulent forms.
He said the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office contacted his company last year in connection with an investigation into two canvassers the company employed. Field+Media Corps fired those two workers, Heredia said.
Clients or past clients of Field+Media Corps in Arizona include several prominent Arizona voter advocacy groups, including LUCHA, Chispa AZ, and CPLC Action Fund, according to the company’s website.
This election cycle, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office has flagged FieldCorps, the parent company of Field+Media Corps, for submitting a high percentage of incomplete or inaccurate forms, office spokesperson Sierra Ciaramella confirmed Wednesday….