RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – With just a little over one week until election day here in North Carolina, the State Board Of Elections is issuing an alert to voters about mailings and text messages which may be inaccurate or contain intentional misinformation.  

On Friday, Consumer Investigator Steve Sbraccia told you how scammers are trying to use text messages from what appear to be political campaigns to trick you into giving up money or your personal information.

Now, the State Board of Elections is warning about mass mailings and text messages to voters about early voting before Nov. 8.

With just days to go before voting ends for this mid-term election, the state board said a lot of “noise” is being generated by all kinds of groups — and voters are concerned.

“We’re hearing from a number of voters about various mailings that have gone out, as well as text messages indicating inaccuracies in their voting history from previous elections or even text messages saying they haven’t voted yet,” Karen Brinson Bell said, the executive director of the State Board of Elections.

Sbraccia was one of those who received a text saying he hadn’t voted yet, even though he’d done so days earlier.

The text was from a Tennessee area code and claims to have used “public records”, but it doesn’t say from when.

“Depending on when they got that information it could be outdated,” Bell said. “The vendor information might not even be associated with a voter record. When you start mingling data, potentially there are errors in that.”

As of Monday, the State Board of Elections said approximately 1.2 million people have either voted via absentee ballots or voted in person as various groups continue to try to get the attention of the rest of those who’ve yet to cast ballots. 

“NC is a very competitive state so we see a lot of activity from campaigns and advocacy groups,” Bell said. “The ‘noise’ has become part of our elections and some of it is misinformation and disinformation.”

The State Board of Elections is also running its own ads on social media trying to counter some of that noise, providing accurate early voting information for any county.

If you get a text that said you didn’t vote, you can see if your ballot was recorded on the State Board of Elections website under the voter search tab. 

“We are the ones who can tell you firsthand what your voting history is,” Bell said.

One question unanswered in all this? Will the prodding and texting and mailing increase the numbers of people who will vote this time around, or will it actually turn folks off and make them less inclined to vote?

“We’ll leave that up to the political scientists to research it,” Bell said.