Iowa Secretary of State: Finkenauer Campaign Source of Erroneous Text Messages

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced Wednesday afternoon that the source of text messages sent to Iowa voters with incorrect polling place information was the Abby Finkenauer for Congress campaign. Secretary Pate was made aware of the erroneous text messages late in the evening on Monday, June 4.

Following an investigation by the Secretary of State’s Office, it was determined Abby Finkenauer’s campaign was the source. She is a Democratic candidate in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District race.

Pate’s office said that Finkenauer’s campaign and its vendor were cooperative with their investigation and stated that a corrective text message had been sent out to voters.  After speaking with the campaign and their vendor, Secretary Pate concluded that the inaccurate text messages were the result of the campaign’s data management error, and were not malicious in nature.

While some voters outside of Iowa’s 1st Congressional District received the erroneous text messages, Pate confirmed that the known cases were due to a data match error that occurred within the Finkenauer campaign’s files.

“I encourage all Iowans to utilize the polling place lookup tool on our website, sos.iowa.gov,” Secretary Pate said. “Moving forward, I also encourage candidates to include an attribution statement in all messages sent to voters. The inclusion of an attribution statement makes it easier for voters to contact a campaign if issues arise.”