As with every big voting year, the North Carolina State Board of Elections is receiving complaints and questions from voters about mailers, texts and other campaign communications, says spokesman Patrick Gannon.
This year, Gannon says the complaint he’s heard most recently and most often is about absentee ballots. He says organizations are telling people that their data shows the voter has not requested one.
That’s bogus, he says.
“There’s no way their data shows that they haven’t because they don’t have any of that data," he says. "It would be illegal for election officials to give out information about who has requested absentee ballots.”
Gannon says almost everything voters need to do in advance of voting can be done at an official county or state site. It’s usually not necessary to go to a third-party site.
Also, sometimes texts that purport to be from campaigns are actually phishing scams attempting to hack you in some way, he says.
Marques Thompson, director of the nonpartisan Democracy North Carolina, has heard complaints about misinformation spread through electioneering.
“Some standard things that you get are phone calls, robocalls giving people the wrong days to vote, or telling people misinformation about election days — like the early voting days, or the times for early voting,” he says.
Thompson says such efforts undermine trust in the electoral process. He urges people to go to verified sources for voting information instead of relying on unsolicited messaging.
The state Board of Elections recommends that residents check to make sure they are registered before they prepare to vote. That can be done using the Voter Search tool on the agency’s website.
Editors note: This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.
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