Election time is around the corner, and Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read just urged Oregon voters to use official government websites to check their registration.
Third-party websites do exist to confirm your information. Some do provide a legitimate service to confirm it, but on top of that service, they track your personal information… and then they sell it.
Read announced it with a graphic labeled “Scam Alert,” identifying VoteSafe.org as an unofficial voter-registration website tied to Elon Musk. “Scam Alert” might have been overly aggressive in terms of language, but not only is his warning 100% real, votesafe might not be as safe as the name may suggest.
(Photo: Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read via Tobias Read)
“Votesafe.org is another tactic at gaining access to voter data and meddling in American citizens’ right to vote,” Read said. He directed Oregonians to the state’s website to verify and update their registration… not VoteSafe.org.
Tobias Read is Oregon’s chief elections officer. His office oversees statewide election administration, serves as the state’s chief auditor, and manages the State Archives and Corporation Division.
His warning centers on a website that presents itself as a resource for registration assistance, absentee voting, registration checks, and election reminders.
Looking more closely into VoteSafe, we found it is operated by a political organization, and information submitted there is subject to that organization’s data policies.
How is it connected to Musk? The connection is documented right there on the organization’s websites. The VoteSafe homepage identifies America PAC as its sponsor, and America PAC identifies Musk as its founder. Next.
Western Creative Group is a business and data-sharing partner of America PAC. The privacy policy explicitly names the company among organizations that may receive personal information.
There is also a connection through Musk’s political spending… Western Creative Group handled advertising for RBG PAC, a separate Musk-funded committee.
VoteSafe’s registration page will ask visitors for their name, date of birth, mailing address, email address, and cellphone number. Its consent language adds another layer, though. The consent information authorizes emails, calls, and text messages from America PAC.
VoteSafe.org’s policy allows tracking when you register. How exactly does it track you? Information may be collected automatically through cookies and other online tracking tools, including the history and future history of pages you visited, links you clicked, and your approximate location based on your IP address.
The policy also allows the organization to combine that information with data from outside sources to build a profile of a visitor’s interests and political views.
Read’s “Scam Alert” language is his characterization. The site’s political sponsorship and data-sharing permissions are well documented in its own disclosures. Disclosures most people don’t read.
The practical distinction is between providing information to a political organization and checking an official state election record. That is the main message of Read’s warning.
Oregon’s My Vote service allows residents to check their registration, update voter information, track their ballot, and find ballot drop sites. New voters can use the state’s official registration portal.
Editor’s note: Our website tracks page views as a single numerical stat. Readers mean more than a number to us, but in terms of “personal data collection”, that is as far as we will ever go.
This article was written by Jesse Grant, a contributor to The Corvallis Inquirer. Feel free to send us your stories or articles to publish at: editor@corvallisnow.com
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