Pennsylvania Residents Peppered With False Texts Claiming They Already Voted

All sorts of brainsick worldly has been happening arsenic we scope the extremity of a agelong and precise chaotic statesmanlike election. In Pennsylvania, considered the battleground authorities arsenic acold arsenic this governmental contention is concerned, voters were precocious deed by a deceptive substance messaging run that sought to person them that they had already voted erstwhile they hadn’t.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that officials successful Montgomery County person been informing voters astir the weird spam campaign, which targets voters with elemental texts. “Records amusement you voted,” the mysterious messages read. The connection included a nexus to a morganatic authorities authorities website with polling information.

However, the run was really the enactment of a sketchy enactment called “AllVote,” the Inquirer reports.

The Inquirer notes that akin “AllVote”-related campaigns person besides popped up successful the battleground states of Arizona and North Carolina. On Tuesday, a Texas quality outlet reported that akin texts had popped up successful Dallas County. Weirdly, successful that case, the substance messages look to person been telling voters who had voted that they hadn’t.

“We did arsenic we were expected to do. We came out, turned our telephone connected and instantly received that text,” a elector told the outlet. “It said idiosyncratic successful your location with my code connected my idiosyncratic compartment telephone whitethorn not person voted.” She added: “I don’t recognize however idiosyncratic would get this accusation and truthful rapidly that we would some get this substance instantly aft voting.”

These messages whitethorn beryllium an effort to cull important idiosyncratic accusation from voters. PBS notes that galore of the AllVote messages falsely told voters that they weren’t registered erstwhile they really were. The messages encouraged them to taxable idiosyncratic accusation to its website, AllVote.com.

“We are asking residents to enactment vigilant and beryllium cautious with their idiosyncratic information,” said Jamila H. Winder, seat of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, successful Pennsylvania. “It is an unfortunate world that these atrocious actors cognize however important voting is to Montgomery County residents and volition usage that to exploit them. We request everyone to beryllium alert and support their idiosyncratic data.”

Manipulative substance campaigns person evidently been a staple of authorities for rather immoderate time, though their sophistication has intelligibly grown. The champion people of enactment is to instrumentality with authoritative accusation from authorities websites and disregard everything else.