If you get a letter from the Supervisor of Elections office questioning your citizenship, give it a second look because it is likely a scam.

Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland says the letter tells you your voter eligibility is in question and you will be removed from the rolls in 15 days unless you can prove your citizenship. It comes on letterhead customized to your county and at first glance can appear legitimate.

“If it’s for ‘From the Desk of…’ and the Supervisor of Elections, but there’s a large American flag in the left hand corner that is not our logo, that is not our stationary,” Holland says.

About ten fake letters have been reported in Duval County so far, and reports of the letters have come in to St. Johns County and Brevard County as well.  But it’s an “unusual” scam according to Holland because it doesn’t direct people to send their information anywhere.

The letter originates from Seattle, Washington and asks for some information.  If you have any questions or information to pass forward, however, it directs you to the local Supervisor.  As such, your information would not get sent anywhere suspect.

“We don’t know what the motivation is,” Holland says.

And the people who have been getting the letter are questioning it as well.  City Council President Bill Bishop thought it was “just silly” that his citizenship would be questioned because he was vetted for his election not too long ago. He says there were a few red flags that tipped him off right away.

“There was no return address, it was unlike any other correspondence I have seen from the Supervisor of Elections office,” he says.

For Bishop, the biggest mistake was in his name.  He says the name on his letter didn’t match the name on his voter registration, which made no sense is it was coming from the elections office.

He is equally as confused as local supervisors on what could be the motive behind the letter which seems, at the most, to just be an inconvenience to anyone who gets it.

“It seems to me the worst that would happen is they would go downtown to the Supervisor of Elections office and say ‘here I’ve got this form, I’m supposed to fill this out’ and they’d waste some time,” he says.

Holland is passing along all the information he gets in to the State Elections Office as well as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.  He says if you get one of these bogus letters you should not handle it, because investigators are trying to get finger prints off of the letters.

“Postal fraud, elections fraud- I mean it’s got so many violations it’s amazing somebody would attempt this,” he says.

Holland says his office could ask for some of your information by sending out a letter, but it would be through certified mail and include a signature from his office.  These letters had neither of those, in addition to the American flag.

Right now, his best guess is that this is some sort of voter intimidation tactic, where voters would be concerned about not appearing on the roles.  The clear answer, however, is under investigation.