By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Election authorities are warning voters to be wary of unsolicited text messages that could lead them to the wrong polling place on Election Day.
The text messages list the recipient’s address and state that “public records suggest you may not have voted yet (this data could be wrong, or old).” In Rockford, the message then directs the recipient to cast their ballot at the Winnebago County Clerk’s Office, 404 Elm St., and includes a picture of the building.
“People should be mindful of any type of unsolicited text message that they receive,” Winnebago County Clerk Lori Gummow said.
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The company behind the messages said they were sent in error, and affected about 10% of the voters it contacted.
Gummow said her office is aware of the messages, but hadn’t received any complaints from voters. The Rockford Board of Elections, however, received three phone calls complaining of inaccurate information in the unsolicited texts.
“One of the calls was from one of our election judges,” said Stacey Bixby, executive director of the Rockford election authority.
One of the in-office employees of the Rockford Board of Elections also received the message, Bixby said.
The State Board of Elections, in a warning to voters put out Tuesday, said the messages come from a group called Voting Futures. But Bixby said her office learned of near identical messages from groups with different names, too: Voto Latino and Black Voters Matter.
The company behind the messages, Movement Labs, said the messages were inadvertently sent on behalf of Voto Latino, Black Voters Matter and Voting Futures to voters in Kansas, New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia.
“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,” the company said in a statement on its website.
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Erich and Lisa DeLang of Rockford said they both received the message from Voting Futures with inaccurate information. Then, the following day, they got follow-up texts saying “that information may not have been correct.”
“In an era where there is a large cohort of Americans that don’t trust the outcomes of elections and that talk a lot about ‘fake news,’ this kind of bad information coming through introduces additional questions at a time when they’re least needed,” Erich DeLang said. “It’s entirely possible that it was a good-faith error, or something like that, but it’s a lot of mistakes over a lot of territory directed at a very specific group of people and that makes me ask questions.”
The state has asked voters who receive suspicious text messages or emails to forward screenshots or links to scamalert@electionsil.gov.
“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,” State Board of Elections Executive Director Bernadette Matthews said in a news release.
You can find your correct polling place using this online polling place locator tool from the state. You can similarly verify your polling place on the Rockford Board of Elections website or see the list on the Winnebago County Clerk’s website.
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This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas.