Any political party operative will tell you that Election Day victories are assured by making sure that your people get to the polls. That, of course, requires telling them when they need to be there.

Today a large number of voters in D.C. reported getting early-morning robocalls from the D.C. Democratic State Committee urging them to vote—tomorrow. (NBC 4’s Tom Sherwood was one; he tweeted about it.) D.C. doesn’t run the risk of falling into Republican hands, but still—there are many a swayable voters out there that could cast important ballots for Democratic candidates running for every office from the presidency on down to the school board.

So what happened? Anita Bonds, the party’s chairwoman, told us that the mistake stemmed from a Chicago-based vendor using a script recorded yesterday for a small number of calls made today. The call’s message was used yesterday on a list of 100,000 infrequent or new D.C. voters, said Bonds, and the vendor stopped it at 8:55 p.m. before it had run its course. Around 8 a.m. today, the robocalls were restarted, albeit with the same script as yesterday. As a consequence, some 1,700 D.C. voters were told to get out and vote—tomorrow.

Bonds said she was tipped off to the mistake early on, and the script was re-recorded and the entire 100,000-person list was called again, urging them to vote today, she said.

“I’m pleased that people are acknowledging that they got the call,” she said, adding that it meant that most voters were aware that today was Election Day. “They need to get their buns out to vote, and I hope they’re doing just that.”