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Did a British SMS Honeypot Discover Election Fraud in the US Midterms?

By Eric Priezkalns

20 May 2026

Nuisance & Spam

A spam message about 'cell signal coverage' linked to a poll harvesting data about supporters of two Republicans competing in the Texas Senate primary.

In a few days from now, Texan voters will decide if incumbent Senator John Cornyn (pictured left) will be the Republican Party’s nominee again, or if he will be replaced by hard-right challenger Ken Paxton (right). I imagine that fact was unknown to BluGem, a British business that provides independent network testing services, until a peculiar unsolicited SMS was captured by one of the American nodes in their global scam honeypot.<br>On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your cell signal coverage near your home?

BluGem is the kind of business that knows how to test a mobile operator’s coverage, as well as how to monitor the spam and scam messages that ordinary phone users receive, so this particular spam piqued their interest. But when they clicked the link to a survey supposedly about ‘cell signal coverage’, they were taken to a very different survey instead.<br>2026 Midterm Election Poll

As BluGem observed in their analysis, the poll was only superficially about voting intentions. The real goal appeared to be harvesting the contact details of potential supporters of either Cornyn or Paxton. The survey asked none of the questions about a person’s age, gender or other demographic details that reputable polling companies collect so they can ensure they get a representative cross-section of all voters. But it did ask:<br>Which Texas Senate primary candidate would you vote for if the election were held today?

The multiple choice answers listed Cornyn and Paxton. It certainly seems suspicious that a spam message about phone coverage would lead to an opinion poll about voting intentions, and then for the poll to specifically ask about one especially brutal contest between two members of the same party in one particular seat. Press coverage of the campaigns of Cornyn and Paxton talks about them ‘burying each other’ with negative ads and a ‘deep rift’ within their political party. Paxton has attacked Cornyn over ‘Muslim mass migration’ during his time in office, while Cornyn has highlighted ‘every documented scandal’ during Paxton’s 12 years as the Attorney General for the state.<br>In such circumstances, it certainly seems plausible that this spam campaign was designed to identify potential voters or donors for one man’s campaign… or to play dirty tricks on the supporters of the other candidate. But given the wording, it is impossible to tell whose side the fake pollsters are working for. And probably nobody will do any investigation of who was behind these spam messages. A recent observation by John Barnhill, a former executive at Bandwidth and member of the Technological Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission, illustrates why Americans do not have time to protest about the political dross they receive on their phones. In a post on LinkedIn, Barnhill noted the following:

It is understandable that Barnhill just wants to delete the spam political messages that bombard his phone. Perhaps that also explains why these spammers identified by BluGem relied on trickery to get recipients to click the link to their fake survey. But if everybody just ignores and deletes the messages, then nobody is doing the hard work needed to eliminate the scum who abuse communications services, and there are no consequences for the bad actors who mislead the public. At least BluGem has automated the collection of data about nuisance communications. The real challenge is to find human beings willing to enforce the laws that are supposed to stop this kind of thing.<br>BluGem wrote about this suspicious SMS message in an article published on LinkedIn. You can find it here.

Eric Priezkalnshttp://revenueprotect.comDuring his career, Eric has been a Director of Risk Management for a national telco, the Chief Executive of the Risk & Assurance Group, a Chief Marketing Officer for a software business, a consultant, a public speaker and the publisher of Commsrisk since its launch in 2006. Look here for more about the history of Commsrisk and the role played by Eric.<br>The comms providers that Eric has worked for include Qatar Telecom, Cable & Wireless, T‑Mobile, Sky and Worldcom....