State elections officials issue warning about ‘unofficial’ voter website

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The website may look “government official,” and the voter statistical information appears to be up-to-the-moment legit. But when state elections officials saw the site “Votewashington.info” being widely shared on social media, they said they noticed misinformation on the site immediately.

“We don’t know who has put this site up, we don’t know what that site does, and we don’t know any of the code that’s behind it,” said Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who issued a warning about the site Tuesday on Twitter. “We don’t know if you put your name in the site, where that information is going.”

Wyman’s office issued a warning to all 39 counties saying the Votewashington.info website is not a verifiable source of information and could be spreading misinformation. The site is now under investigation by two cybersecurity agencies tracking who is behind it.

The page shows that in King County Tuesday, more than 9,300 voter ballots had been rejected or challenged and shows names and addresses behind those ballots and reasons why they were rejected.

Wyman says there’s one big problem with this list.

“I can tell you as I sit here today, there hasn’t been a single ballot across the state of Washington that has been rejected yet,” Wyman said. “And I know that because no county has had canvassing board meetings, and the county canvassing board is the only entity that can reject a ballot. We don’t know where the source of information this website or this application even came from.”

Wyman said she didn’t know where the list of voters connected to challenged ballots came from, but she suggested the site could be intended to cast doubt in voters who have already cast their ballots.

“The fact that a site is telling voters by name individually that their ballots have been rejected is just one more way to inflame voters and to get them riled up believing something that is simply not true,” she said.

The state’s official website, votewa.gov is still the only secure, safe and official site interconnected with all 39 counties, Wyman said, adding a warning about entering your name and voter information into another site.

“You just don’t know where that’s going.”

Cox Media Group