The FBI says a text telling you that you are not registered to vote is a scam, and vote.gov is the check

A text message or email saying the recipient is not registered to vote in their state is a scam, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, and the check it recommends is vote.gov. The warning is one of four election-season fraud schemes the bureau described on October 15, 2026, three weeks before the November midterm.

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The FBI gives no count of victims and no dollar total for the voter-registration scheme. What it supplies is the pattern: an unsolicited message arrives, claims a registration problem, and pushes the reader toward a fake page built to harvest personal details. Voters who get such a message can verify their status directly and report it afterward.

The fake registration page and what it collects

In its public service announcement, the FBI’s alert on 2026 midterm election fraud describes the voter-registration scheme in a single sentence: “Victims receive a text message or email stating they are not registered to vote in their state.” The recipient is then directed to a counterfeit state registration page. The goal, the bureau says, is to steal personal information for identity theft and possibly further fraud.

The practical defense follows from that design. A registration claim that arrives unprompted, with a link attached, fits the FBI’s description of an unsolicited message asking for personal information, so the safer move is to leave the message alone and look up registration status through a route the voter chose. That is the reason the bureau lists the vote.gov registration check among its protection steps: the voter starts the lookup, rather than following a link supplied by whoever sent the text. The same logic applies to a message that arrives by email and claims a deadline is about to pass.

Campaign pools, ScamPACs and the other three schemes

The PSA names four schemes in total, and the other three involve money rather than identity data. In a campaign investment pool, victims are promised a guaranteed return for putting money into a pool that supposedly pays out if a candidate wins, and they are urged to recruit others to raise their payout. The FBI’s counter is blunt: “Campaign donations are not an investment and will not increase in value nor be returned.”

The second money scheme is the ScamPAC. Victims believe they are donating to a legitimate political action committee, super PAC or candidate committee, but the scammers have no affiliation with the committee and keep the funds. The fourth scheme is an online purchase fraud in which sellers advertise political merchandise, take payment and never ship anything, a pattern also called non-delivery fraud.

Checking a committee before giving is possible. The bureau tells donors to look up PAC, party and candidate committee registrations and financial filings through the Federal Election Commission, whose committee search on the FEC website lists registered committees and their reports. It adds that a committee can appear registered and still report high fundraising, consulting, compliance or administrative expenses, which is one of the warning signs it lists.

AI-made messages and the red flags the FBI lists

The alert updates an earlier warning, the bureau’s October 2024 election fraud alert, and adds a concern about technology. Scammers use candidates’ names, images, logos and slogans, and they increasingly use artificial intelligence to create realistic voices, images and messages that impersonate candidates, campaigns, government entities and trusted contacts. That realism, the FBI says, makes the schemes harder to spot.

Its red-flag list is short and practical. Unsolicited calls, texts, emails or surveys that ask for personal information or contain links are one. Promises of guaranteed returns from campaign contributions are another, as is pressure to recruit other people to invest or donate. Contact details that are not clearly tied to the organization being claimed, and merchandise sellers with no reviews or complaint history, round out the set.

The FBI’s advice follows from the list. Do not share personal information with unknown people or click unknown links, treat donations as contributions rather than investments, confirm that contact details belong to the group a message says it represents, and research a merchant before buying by checking reviews and complaints. For voters, the one extra step the bureau names is to check registration at vote.gov, since the legitimate answer to a registration question does not depend on anything a text message contains.

Where to report an election scam

Anyone who has already responded can report to a local FBI field office or to the Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. The bureau asks for as much detail as possible: the name of the person or company that made contact, phone numbers, addresses, email addresses and websites, financial transaction details including the payment method, and a description of how contact began, what was said or requested, and what information was handed over.

The same announcement sits beside related FBI notices issued that week, including one on threats to election workers ahead of the November 2026 midterm and another with election crime warnings for voters, so the scam alert is one piece of a wider set of pre-election advisories rather than a stand-alone item.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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