This long, strange election season is lurching toward its inevitable conclusion tomorrow (Tuesday, Nov. 8), and, befitting the tone of the campaign, it doesn’t look like it’s going to end routinely.
Jefferson County Clerk Wes Wagner, the county’s election authority, said local residents have reported receiving strange text messages, phone calls and letters with false information about polling places and times to vote and other election-related misinformation.
Wagner said he filed a report with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office early Monday afternoon (Nov. 7) concerning text messages that people said they received advising them of incorrect election-related information.
“A woman called us and told us that she got a text message that told her to go to the wrong polling place,” Wagner said. “She said her mother and her sister, who live in different parts of the state, received the same kind of messages, telling them to go to different polling places than they are assigned to.”
Wagner said members of his staff also have received similar messages from the same telephone number.
The telephone number listed on the text messages was 636-900-7006.
A call to that telephone number triggers a recorded message that “an application error has occurred.”
“I need to make sure I make something clear here,” Wagner said. “My office doesn’t get involved when one candidate says something bad about the other. But the elections office is very concerned when incorrect voting information gets spread around. Voters need to know the correct information about when and where they need to vote.”
Bogus voter report cards
Wagner said his office also has received calls about a mailer that purports to be a “voter report card.”
“I haven’t seen it, but people who have called our office tell us that it will say something like, ‘You didn’t vote in March or April or August, so you get an F as a voter.’
“First, my office would never send anything like that out. While we’d like everyone to vote in every election, it’s not our job to ‘grade’ voters.
“What I think this is, is an effort to intimidate voters from voting tomorrow. This is not on the up-and-up by any means,” he said.
No letters from Northwest R-1
Finally, Wagner said, he is dismayed by calls from Northwest R-1 School District residents who say they were sent letters advising them not to vote at certain times tomorrow in district schools that host polling places.
“The letters tell people not to go vote between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. tomorrow so that they don’t disrupt the bus schedule and the start of school,” Wagner said.
“The people who have called us have said they’re very upset because with their work schedules, that’s the only time they can vote,” he said. “The problem with this is that Northwest doesn’t have classes tomorrow.”
Northwest Superintendent Paul Ziegler said that letter did not originate from the district.
“No one here has been authorized to send any letter out telling people when to vote,” he said. “We won’t have classes tomorrow, so it’s not a factor. We’ll have a professional development day for teachers, but that won’t be a problem.
“If anyone has a copy of this letter,” Ziegler said, “I’d like to see it.”
Wagner said he has not seen a copy of the letter, but was told that it was sent out on official district letterhead.
Ziegler said the district sent out a letter in late March advising people who vote at Murphy Elementary School, a relatively small campus, that traffic could be tied up before school started.
“But that was in March. This is November, and we’re not going to be in session,” he said.
[After the election, Wagner said the letters were identified as those that were sent out in April and mistakenly believed to pertain to the November election.]
Wagner said his office would not try to restrict voting hours, which run from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.
“While we have advised people that if they can be flexible with their voting times and can avoid going to the polls early in the morning, they’ll probably see shorter waiting times later in the morning and early in the afternoon. But we would never discourage anyone from voting anytime they feel is convenient.”