Mysterious robocall warns Americans to 'stay inside' in suspected attempt to scare people away from voting

A mysterious and foreboding robocaller has been reportedly warning Americans to "stay safe and stay home" over the last several weeks.  

Some Americans who received the call said they thought it was an attempt to scare them away from heading to the polls to vote.  

The calls do not explicitly mention the 2020 US election. 

According to The Washington Post, the calls all featured the same message: A female, computerized voice that says the call is a "test call" before twice delivering the message urging people to stay inside.  

The calls began at some point over the summer and have intensified throughout October. It is estimated the robocaller has made at least 10 million calls to American households.

The calls appear to have reached a household in every zip code in the US.

YouMail, a tech company that created an app to help users block robocalls, investigated the strange message and now believe it is foreign in origin and sophisticated in its tactics. 

The company’s CEO, Alex Quilici, said that even without mentioning the election directly, the strange message is still capable of creating havoc and confusion on Election Day. 

"If you wanted to cause havoc in America for the elections, one way to do it is clearly robocalling," Mr Quilici said. "This whole thing is exposing [that] it can be very difficult to react quickly to a large calling volume campaign."

Zach McMullen - who spoke to The Washington Post - said he received a call on Monday warning him to stay inside. He thought the call was in reference to the growing number of coronavirus cases nationwide, but the robotic female voice gave him pause. 

“I think they mean stay home and don’t vote,” Mr McMullen told the paper. 

Other automated messages have been deployed to try to stymie election turnout. 

In Michigan, the state attorney general Dana Nessel warned voters that a suspicious text was going around misleading voters. The text warned that a technological mistake required supporters of Joe Biden to vote for Donald Trump, and vice versa. 

The text suggested that issue affected “Scranton ballots” - referencing a city in Pennsylvania - and attributed the information to the “Federal Berue [sic] of Investigation.” 

Ms Nessel warned voters not to fall for the trick.