With less than five weeks to Election Day. Many of us are getting robo-calls – computer generated calls asking for your vote or trying to help you get an absentee ballot. But some of those calls are causing confusion.
Starting a few weeks ago the Manatee County Supervisor of Elections Office was flooded with hundreds of calls. Elections Supervisor Bob Sweat says many were coming from automated robo-calls.
“What they’re doing when a person picks up the phone they’re saying if you’d like to have an absentee ballot punch one and the when they punch one it dials directly into our office and people think it’s us calling and asking if they’ve got an absentee ballot or if they want an absentee ballot”, Sweat said. “And we answer the phone here we get some irate people but we’re not the ones making the calls.”
Sweat says many of the calls are people who aren’t interested in a ballot. Some were even out of state.
He’s not the only county experiencing robo-call connections. Sarasota and Pasco report the same robo-calls.
Sweat says, bottom line: his office will send out the ballots if the caller is registered and provides the proper information.