Fake Mailers, Hijacked Websites: Local Elections Are Seeing a New Kind of "Fraud"

A recent letter to the editor published in Observer Local News pointed to what its author called "hobgoblins of disinformation": fraudulent campaign mailers, campaign websites that get hijacked and rerouted to an opponent's site, and disinformation text messages sent to local voters targeting various candidates. The letter identified three separate instances of this kind of deceptive tactic affecting local candidates over the past four years.

Unlike traditional voter fraud, which typically affects one ballot at a time, these tactics are designed to reach large numbers of voters at once, giving them real potential to influence an election's outcome. And unlike a forged signature or an illegal vote, this kind of deception is difficult to trace back to whoever created it, and even harder to stop before Election Day.

The most serious example to date comes from just north of Volusia County. In 2024, voters in St. Johns County received mailers designed to look like the official voter guide of the county's Republican Executive Committee, using the party's real name, logo and branding, but promoting an entirely different slate of candidates. A nearly two-year investigation led to criminal charges against five people in July 2026, including two sitting county commissioners, on counts of conspiracy and publishing an unauthorized voter guide.

That's not an isolated case, either. Local outlets across Flagler and Volusia counties have documented a pattern of fraudulent mailers, hijacked campaign websites, and disinformation texts targeting candidates over the past several years.

Faced with a guide like that, most people ask one question: is this side telling the truth? That's the wrong first question. The better ones come earlier.

First: who's actually behind it? "Grassroots" has become one of the most overused words in local politics precisely because it does a lot of persuasive work for very little accountability. It implies ordinary residents, community interest over personal benefit, something closer to consensus than to one person's opinion. But there's no registration requirement to call yourself grassroots, no threshold of support to clear, nobody checking whether it's true. Florida law does require a paid-for-by disclaimer on political material, and it's genuinely worth reading, not skimming past. A guide willing to name who's behind it, in a way you can actually verify against the state's political committee database, has already cleared a bar that plenty of guides never bother to reach.

Second: how is it arguing? This is the part disclosure alone doesn't catch, because a guide can name its sponsor honestly and still be built entirely on grudges rather than facts. Fact-based advocacy sources its claims to something verifiable — a vote record, a meeting transcript, a campaign filing — rather than asserting character or motive with nothing behind it. It's willing to be checked. A guide built on an ax to grind tends to look different: it attacks motive instead of citing specific, checkable actions; it asks you to distrust another source without offering any verifiable claims of its own; and its timing often lines up suspiciously well with a recent vote, dispute, or personal falling-out. None of those signs alone prove bad faith. Together, they're worth noticing.

Personal gain, worth watching for either way, doesn't always mean money changing hands. It can mean settling a score, protecting a relationship, or simply wanting to be the one who decided how an election went. None of that is illegal, and none of it disqualifies someone from having a voice. But it's context a reader deserves before letting a claim shape their ballot.

Neither "grassroots" nor "partisan" is a useful test on its own; both labels are self-applied and mean less than they sound like they mean. The better test is simpler: can the claims be verified, and is the source willing to be known? A guide that clears both bars deserves to be taken seriously, whoever wrote it. One that fails either deserves skepticism, no matter how many times it calls itself grassroots.

Do your own research and don't take other groups' recommendations at face value because they have a cute sounding name. Take the five minutes. Ask who's behind it, and ask what they're actually basing it on. Your vote is worth that much scrutiny, wherever the next guide comes from.