Illinois Board of Elections warns of text message directing voters to wrong polling place
By Deion Broxton
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ST. LOUIS, Missouri (KMOV) — The Illinois State Board of Elections said voters have complained of receiving unsolicited text messages with incorrect information on Election Day polling places.
The text messages, from a group called Voting Futures, list the recipient’s voting address, state that public records indicate the recipient has not yet voted and then inform the recipient of a voting location that often is incorrect, according to state officials.
“We started getting calls on Monday of people complaining about receiving these text messages,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Elections. “A lot of these were incorrect. Our concern was; is this being done intentionally to misdirect voters? We know that some people, as soon as they received these text messages, probably looked at it and then opted out of all future messages, which means they wouldn’t have received the correction text.”
Movement Labs is the company that sent the text messages on behalf of Voting Futures. The company posted the following statement to its website:
“At Movement Labs, our goal is to use technology to safeguard our democracy and build power for marginalized communities. For the last month, we’ve been running an ambitious, effective, and complex program to encourage early vote and election day turnout amongst progressive voters. We’re proud to say that tens of thousands of voters have thanked us for sending helpful, accurate information that has helped them vote with confidence.
“Unfortunately, in text messages sent on behalf of Voto Latino, Black Voters Matter, and Voting Futures to voters in KS, NJ, IL, NC, and VA, we sent information to encourage voting that has caused confusion amongst voters. We take full responsibility for these mistakes and have issued correction texts encouraging voters to verify their voting place with the secretary of state website.
“This program relies on difficult-to-compile polling location data from multiple sources matched to individuals on the voter file, and we fell short of our rigorous standards with some of these errors, which we believe impacted around 10% of the voters we contacted.
“Moving forward, we are conducting an investigation and commit to releasing a report widely summarizing our findings.
“As a team of grassroots organizers committed to voter integrity and democratic values, we know that mistakes like this, when the stakes are high, have a true impact. We are humbled by this and will continue to work for democratic and progressive values.”
The St. Louis Better Business Bureau is also warning voters of scams and misinformation this election season.
“While this isn’t fraud, you never know what the intention is going to be,” said Sarah Wetzel with the BBB. “We’ve seen a lot of scams that are calling and texting asking for political donations.”
Voters are reminded that correct polling place information can be found by using the Polling Place Locator tool on the State Board of Elections website. The State Board of Elections does not communicate with voters using text messages, nor does it hire third parties to communicate with voters.
“We want Illinois voters to know that their election information should come only from trusted sources like the State Board of Elections or their local election authority,” said Board of Elections Executive Director Bernadette Matthews.
Voters can also receive election information by following the State Board of Elections on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Voters who receive suspicious election-related text messages or emails or view social media posts that contain suspected election misinformation should forward screenshots and/or links to scamalert@elections.il.gov.
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