By MARC LEVY and MARK SCOLFORO

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — More than 4,000 mail-in ballot applications have been challenged in 14 Pennsylvania counties, leaving election officials to decide voters’ eligibility during hearings that will extend well beyond Election day.

State election officials say the “massive challenges” focused on two separate groups: people who may have forwarded their mail without also changing their voter registration and non-military American voters living abroad. Overseas voters are only entitled to cast votes under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act for president and seats in Congress.

The state had a 5 p.m. Friday deadline for anyone to challenge mail-in ballot requests; Any ballots from those voters whose applications were challenged must be sequestered until county elections board officials hold a hearing to adjudicate the claims. Those hearings must be held no later than Friday, three days after Election Day.

Pennsylvania is a critical swing state that could be a deciding factor in the race between the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Donald Trumpa very close race on the eve of election day. If the margin is close, the 4,300 mail-in ballots in question could be enough to determine who wins the state and its 19 electoral votes.

The effort follows a federal judge’s ruling. failed last week to dismiss a lawsuit filed by six Republican members of Congress seeking to force Pennsylvania election officials to establish new checks confirming the eligibility and identity of military and foreign voters.

The county board of elections’ first hearing, held Friday in Chester County, in the Philadelphia suburbs, resulted in the rejection of all challenges filed to mail-in ballot applications, stating that people have moved and They should have changed where they vote.

“The scary thing was that they had sent this letter with a voter deregistration deregistration form and claimed that they got 2,300 voters to deregister” in Pennsylvania, Democratic Chester County Commissioner Josh Maxwell said Monday.

Challenges cost $10 per voter and it is not entirely clear who filed each one. In Chester County, they were introduced by Diane Houser, a Trump supporter who said they were nonpartisan and from a grassroots network.

Lycoming County will hold a hearing Friday on the 72 challenges it received from Karen DiSalvo, an attorney for PA Fair Elections, a conservative group that has fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures. DiSalvo said he raised the challenges in his capacity as an individual and not as a member of any organization.

“The challenges filed simply state that county election officials must properly process the voter registration applications they already have for these applicants. Voters do not need to do anything: everyone has received their ballot. To resolve the eligibility issues raised in the challenges, county officials must properly register applicants,” DiSalvo wrote in an email.

In York County, the board of elections denied all challenges (354) on Monday, but Chief Clerk Greg Monskie said the board agreed to keep those ballots segregated for a period in which an appeal can be filed.

The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, said there were about 3,700 challenges to mail-in ballot applications from foreign voters pending in 10 counties as of Saturday. There were also challenges pending in four counties to 363 voters based on alleged address changes, plus the 212 who were rejected or withdrawn in Chester County in that category.

Eric Roe, a Republican commissioner from Chester, said those who had been questioned included active-duty military, college students and people who left Pennsylvania in search of medical care.

“I am alarmed that someone would take that approach to disenfranchise legitimate Pennsylvania voters,” Roe said. “And I can’t think of anything less American than that.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania says filling out a change of address form does not necessarily mean a voter has moved out of the state permanently; those forms can also be used to forward mail.