Abby Finkenauer’s campaign was the source of text messages that sent voters in several counties incorrect information about their polling places the day before Iowa’s primary election.
Johnson County Auditor Travis Weipert began receiving complaints on June 4 from voters who had received the inaccurate texts. An Iowan posted this image on Weipert’s comment thread, saying, “My parents received text messages like this.”
According to Weipert, the texts all came from the 844 area code. Secretary of State Paul Pate told reporters on election day that auditors in Black Hawk, Linn, Polk, and Winneshiek counties had heard from voters about the same problem. He speculated that a campaign was the source and said the problem was “under control” but did not elaborate. My message to the Secretary of State’s office seeking further information was unreturned.
Pate’s office released more details in a June 6 press release. Excerpts:
Following an investigation by the Secretary of State’s Office, it was determined Abby Finkenauer’s campaign was the source. She is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Representative District 1.
The Finkenauer campaign and its vendor were cooperative with our investigation, and stated that a corrective text message had been sent out to voters. After speaking with the campaign and their vendor, Secretary Pate has concluded that the inaccurate text messages were the result of the campaign’s data management error, and were not malicious in nature.
While some voters outside of Iowa’s First Congressional District received the erroneous text messages, Secretary Pate has confirmed that the known cases were due to a data match error that occurred within the Finkenauer campaign’s files.
“I encourage all Iowans to utilize the polling place look up tool on our website, sos.iowa.gov,” Secretary Pate said. “Moving forward, I also encourage candidates to include an attribution statement in all messages sent to voters. The inclusion of an attribution statement makes it easier for voters to contact a campaign if issues arise.”
All political text messages should have attribution statements as standard operating procedure, not only in case of problems but for the sake of transparency. Voters in Johnson and Polk counties, which are part of the second and third Congressional districts, would have no reason to suspect a candidate in IA-01 was sending them information about polling places.
Later on June 6, Finkenauer’s campaign manager Joe Farrell confirmed the findings in this statement.
As part of our efforts to engage voters and increase participation in this election, our campaign sent out text messages on Monday reminding voters of election day and where they go to vote. When we heard that there might have been a problem with texts from our campaign, we took immediate action. We contacted our vendor to start investigating how this might have occurred and who may have been impacted. We then sent out a text asking voters to check their polling location with the Secretary of State’s office and provided a link to the polling location finder.
We then contacted the Secretary of State’s office to let them know we were aware of an error and we’re working with our vendor to investigate what might have gone wrong. Our understanding is that a few dozen people were sent inaccurate polling locations unintentionally.
Our campaign never intended to misdirect any voter and we are deeply disturbed this happened. We apologize for the confusion this might have caused any voters. We hope the text with the link to the Secretary of State’s website averted anyone from going to the wrong polling location. We are taking corrective steps to ensure this never happens again. We sincerely apologize for this error.
Here’s hoping every campaign vendor is more careful before the general election. But this incident is a good reminder that:
1. No one should rely on a random text message for information on where and when to vote. The Secretary of State’s website is easy to use, or voters can contact their county auditor’s office to confirm their precinct and polling place location.
2. Anyone who receives an inaccurate political text or e-mail should report the incident to the county auditor, without jumping to conclusions about foreign interference or foul play by the other party.
Top image: Photo an Iowan shared on Johnson County Auditor Travis Weipert’s Facebook thread about voters receiving text messages with erroneous polling place information.