LEE COUNTY — Some voters in Lee County are getting text messages about their ballot, but those messages aren’t coming from the Supervisor of Elections.
We first learned about these texts when Carol Joyner reached out to us. She got a message with a link in it, telling her that her ballot may have been rejected, and that she should request to have it fixed. It also told her to vote for Joe Biden, so she thought it was fishy enough to report.
Joyner said she was already worried when she went to drop off her ballot because she had issues when she was filling it out.
“My pen was giving me a problem, and I was concerned about that, and she said don’t worry. The elections office will get in touch with you if there’s a problem," said Joyner.
But when a text popped up, it wasn’t the elections office. The message said Joyner may need to “fix” her ballot by signing an affidavit, and provided a link to help her do it.
“This is the line that got me coming up. Don’t panic, we can help. Don’t miss your chance to vote for Biden," said Joyner.
We followed the link and ended up on a page to search your voter information, but if you just go to the root website, voterfocus.com, it takes you to the website of a company called VR Systems. We reached out to the Supervisor of Elections about the issue, and the office responded saying "VR Systems is the vendor who manages our Voter Registration Administrative System, along with most every Supervisor of Elections Office in the state.”
We also reached out to the company on a contact email listed on its website, but never got a response. Joyner said she wants people to be aware this is going around.
“I think people need to be really careful about these notes that come in from phone numbers that you don’t recognize," said Joyner.
We also had the chance to speak with the Supervisor of Elections, Tommy Doyle. He said he actually spoke with VR Systems, and the company said it is not behind the text messages. We called the number that the text came from, and it took us to an automated recording, saying it was from "Florida Votes". We are continuing to work to figure out where these messages are coming from.
