Consumer Alert: New York Voters Receive Text Messages With Wrong Voting Information

The New York State Board of Elections has issued an urgent warning about a text message voters across the state are receiving directing them to their polling place. The problem? This sends voters to the wrong place.

A News10NBC employee received one of those messages, which gave his name and correct address but directed him to the wrong polling place, Susan B. Wiley Elementary School. The message suggested checking the information on the legitimate New York State Board of Elections website.

To investigate, I first consulted Reg Harnish, CEO of cybersecurity company OrbitalFire.

Deanna Dewberry: “The link they ask you to click looks exactly like the Board of Elections. So what could be going on here? »

Reg Harnish: “The address is absolutely 100% legitimate. What we must distinguish now is legitimate and summary.

This raises the question: Was this voter misinformation disguised as legitimate by using the real Board of Elections website? Further investigation revealed that this was not a cybercriminal attempt to steal personal information or install malware.

But could it be electoral fraud? For answers, I contacted the State Board of Elections.

Deanna Dewberry, News10NBC: “What seems consistent is that the voting location is wrong. Do you think this is a nefarious attempt at voter suppression?

Kathleen McGrath, Director of Public Information, New York State Board of Elections: “One of the things I did was contact the company directly. The text message was signed by an organization, a grassroots “Get Out the Vote” kind of organization. So I reached out and said this is a problem. People get bad information in polls and we can’t have this type of confusion today before primary day. The company apologized. They admitted that it was human error which led to data sorting errors in terms of voters and polling stations.

The Vote-FTW group aims to empower voters to participate in the democratic process. On his website, he apologized for the error and said he sent follow-up text messages explaining the error and directing people to the Board of Elections website.

Although this appears to have been an honest mistake on the part of a legitimate grassroots organization, voter disinformation campaigns pose a real threat. If you ever have questions about your polling location, go directly to the New York State Board of Elections polling location finder site.

If you think you have been the victim of an election law violation or see anything suspicious, you can report it to the State Election Law Enforcement Division.

I emailed the organization that sent the emails, VoteFTW. A spokesperson said the error was the result of human error and affected 5-10% of text messages sent. Here is the group’s full statement:

We agree with the New York State Board of Elections that the best place to get information about elections and voting is directly from the New York State Board of Elections and boards of elections counties. That’s why our initial texts – even those with the wrong images – directed New Yorkers to the official polling location finder at: https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/. We have been in contact with the New York Board of Elections and have sent an apology and correction to anyone who received incorrect information, directing them to this website.

This was not an act of voter suppression, but rather human error affecting a small subset of people we texted. We apologize for the texts containing misleading information, this was due to a data and technology issue on our end where we had the correct voter data, but in some cases (we estimate about 5-10% of the texts we sent) we mistakenly assigned the voter to the wrong polling station. We are investigating to ensure this does not happen again. Once we learned that some text messages contained incorrect voting location information, we immediately stopped sending further text messages.

Our organization aims to mobilize voters to make their voices heard. While we regret our mistake, we believe technology and digital outreach can help provide crucial voting information to Americans during this election cycle. We will always direct voters to official platforms like their county and state board of elections to ensure they get the most accurate information.

View your statement for more information: https://www.voteftw.com/statement-regarding-new-york-polling-location-images

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