Dirty tricks in Kansas via text: Does yes actually mean no?

In the thick of Kansas' contentious debate over abortion rights, the anonymous text messages arriving on the eve of the big referendum this week seemed clear enough. “Voting YES on the Amendment will give women a choice.”

The only problem: It was a lie, transmitted by text message Monday, a day before voters were to decide a ballot amendment seen as the first test of voter sentiment after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Voters in the conservative state with deep ties to the anti-abortion movement ended up rejecting the measure.

“We’ve certainly seen dirty tricks, but never this level of deception aimed to make people vote the opposite way than they intend to,” said Davis Hammet, president of Loud Light, a youth voter registration and engagement organization in Kansas.

The misleading texts sent to Kansas Democrats highlights the growing problem of political disinformation sent by automated text message, a ubiquitous communication system that presents new opportunities for those who would attempt to deceive voters.

To be sure, ballot initiatives are often confounding — sometimes by design, so voters will support a measure they actually oppose.

But text messages are emerging as an increasingly popular means of spreading disinformation about voting and elections. That reflects a broader embrace of texting by political campaigns and organizations, a trend that accelerated when the pandemic forced campaigns to find new ways to engage with voters.

People in the United States received nearly 6 billion political texts in 2021, according to an analysis by RoboKiller, a mobile phone app that lets users block text and voice spam. That's after a steady rise throughout the 2020 election that saw political spam texts increase by 20% a month.

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