Received texts about your absentee ballot? Here’s how to verify information yourself

PHILLIPS, Wis. — While integrity may be at the forefront of this election, some Wisconsinites received texts incorrectly saying their absentee ballots were rejected, casting doubt and leading to a lot of confusion.  

A week after his absentee ballot was marked as accepted, Price County resident Damion Flores-Wilson just arrived out of state for work when his phone buzzed with a text message.

“This is Sam with the Republican Party,” the message read. “State records indicate the absentee ballot you returned has been rejected. We want to make sure that you are able to fix this before the election! Visit myvote.wi.gov to contact your local clerk so you can fix any issue and make sure your vote is counted!”

“It was very confusing,” Flores-Wilson said.  

Checking on Reddit and Twitter, he found he wasn’t the only one who got the exact same message.

“Whether or not it was actually the Republican Party, I don’t know,” he said. “And I didn’t know if this was an attempt to cause confusion and make people doubt the election or if it was an intent to make me try to vote in person the day of the election, even though I had already voted.”

It may seem suspicious, but according to Madison Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick, “the Wisconsin Elections Commission does offer data to groups. I believe that they pay for that data.”  

“They request anything related to voter registration information, they can get a list of how many people have requested the ballot, a date range in which they submitted that request,” Verbick said. “They can tell the status of the ballot if the ballots been returned, if it’s not been returned, if it’s been ‘not returned, but sent to voters for resolution.’”

Verbick said at this point prior to the election, an absentee ballot would not be labeled “rejected.”  

“Not Returned, sent to voter for resolution” is when a ballot is missing either the voter’s signature or the witness’s signature, or there is a missing or incomplete witness address.

“Since clerks are unable to cure that information, those ballots have been sent back to voters,” he said. Voters need to send that back to be received by Election Day.  

But that information is already readily available on the Wisconsin Elections Commission website, myvote.wi.gov, when tracking your ballot.   

“You can look at the process of your ballot, when you submitted the request, when our office processed the request, when we mailed a ballot, when we would expect the Postal Service to deliver the ballot,” Verbick said.

The most important part of the election process remains confidential.

“What nobody can request is how you vote on your ballot,” he said. “Ballots are secret. We don’t open absentee ballots that have been returned to us until Election Day.”   

Verbick said to always verify any third-party information about your ballot with your municipal clerk or the WEC website.

Because the data is available to various groups, it’s hard to pin down exactly who may have sent the message Flores-Wilson received.

“There’s no credentials associated with text messages,” he said. “So, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t take anyone at their word on it, especially when it comes to your ballot. I would just verify the information and not necessarily go by who’s sending you that who’s saying they’re with one group or the other.”  

That’s exactly what Flores-Wilson did.  

He checked the My Vote website and called the clerk of his precinct. Both said his absentee ballot was still listed as accepted.  

“It’s possible it was a genuine effort to try to help people that were misinformed,” Flores-Wilson said. “But at the very least, all I think it managed to do is cause concern and confusion about a voting method which is very safe and secure.”