Text messages with misleading election info hit voters in 5 states - NBC News

Voters successful 5 states received substance messages successful caller days containing mendacious accusation astir however to vote, but the institution that sent them says it was an error.

Courtesy Kansas Secretary of State's office

The secretaries of authorities successful Kansas and New Jersey warned Monday that voters had been sent incorrect instructions astir wherever to find their polling places. It wasn’t instantly wide however galore radical received the messages.

The messages appeared to person been personally tailored, with voters getting akin texts identifying names and addresses and purported polling locations, signed by a radical called “Voting Futures.”

Movement Labs, a institution that specializes successful governmental substance connection campaigns encouraging progressives to vote, said precocious Monday that it was down the texts and that it took “full work for these mistakes and person issued correction texts.”

In a statement published to its website, it said that 3 campaigns that utilized its services — Voto Latino, Black Voters Matter and Voting Futures — had sent the texts to voters successful Kansas, New Jersey, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia.

"In immoderate of our texts, we sent addresses and images of drop-box locations erstwhile we intended lone to see in-person aboriginal ballot locations," it said.

"We didn’t specify successful our substance that we were trying to promote voters to ballot early. Some voters acquainted with their predetermination time determination thought we were telling them to ballot connected predetermination time astatine an aboriginal ballot location," the connection said.

Movement Labs was down a similarly misleading substance connection campaign successful Oregon successful October.

At slightest 1 substance connection seen by NBC News that was sent successful New Jersey connected Sunday was followed Monday by different message: “We whitethorn person sent you a representation and code of a dropbox oregon aboriginal voting location, and that accusation mightiness not person been correct.”

Both states recommended that voters sojourn their authoritative elections websites for authoritative voting locations: vote.nj.gov for New Jersey and VoterView for Kansas. 

Obtained by NBC News

Experts person warned that substance messages that mislead radical astir however to ballot are a particularly tricky problem. It’s not hard for a malicious sender to fell wherever a substance connection comes from, and the Federal Communications Commission loosened restrictions connected governmental substance messaging earlier the 2020 election.

Kansans were targeted with misleading substance messages this twelvemonth in narration to an termination referendum.

Scott Goodstein, who built the substance connection cognition for Barack Obama’s 2008 statesmanlike run and present warns of the dangers of governmental substance messages, said it’s imaginable the texts are a mistake by a radical that took telephone numbers and matched them to outdated addresses. If the texts were an honorable mistake by a radical trying to assistance radical vote, helium said, the radical did a mediocre occupation of it.

“Just due to the fact that you tin bash a integer lucifer to a telephone fig doesn’t mean you should,” helium said. “Because it’s suppressing immoderate voters erstwhile the accusation is incorrect if each portion of the information isn’t verified.”