CHICAGO (CBS) -- An unknown number of Illinois voters received texts this week telling them where to vote – but it was the wrong location.
As CBS 2 Political Investigator Dana Kozlov reported, election officials say some of the texts went to Chicago voters, as well as those around the state. It raises concerns in this heated election cycle – and is also prompting officials to reassure voters the system is secure.
Voters have been casting their midterm ballots in person for the last couple of weeks. But in just the past few days, unsolicited texts to hundreds of voters caused confusion.
"The problem was many times, the polling places they were referring voters to were not the voters' polling places," said Illinois Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich.
Dietrich said the elections board got dozens of complaints about the texts. They were sent out by a group called Movement Labs on behalf of Voto Latino, Black Votes Matter, and Voting Futures.
The elections board contacted the group, which put out an apology – stating it takes "full responsibility for these mistakes." But Dietrich said in a time of election deniers and false claims of election fraud, an issue like this could be a big problem.
"It's all a form of voter suppression. That's what our concern is when seeing things like this," Dietrich said.
Northwestern University professor Cynthia Wang agrees.
"Even if they're casting doubt – using rhetoric in kind of more subtle ways – it still can be very, very effective...
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