“Records show you voted,” the text read, linking them to an official Pennsylvania website with information about polling places and early voting.
But the message did not come from an official government resource or a well-known get-out-the-vote advocacy group. Instead, it was signed by “AllVote,” a self-proclaimed voter-mobilization program that election officials have repeatedly flagged as a scam to be avoided and ignored.
If “AllVote” sounds familiar, the name has been linked to other confusion-sowing text campaigns in the lead-up to the election. Montgomery County officials in August warned voters about “AllVote.com” that was texting registered voters and
falsely claiming that they were not registered to vote — part of a scam to “capture personal, sensitive information from voters in an attempt to exploit them later on,” election commissioners said.
Election officials in
Arizona and
North Carolina raised concerns about text campaigns from an organization with the same name in recent months.