Tips for Dealing With Political Text Messages

If your phone has been lighting up with texts from candidates, PACs and causes you’ve never heard of, you’re experiencing the new normal.

Political campaigns love text messaging for the same reason scammers and marketers do: most of us pay attention when our phones buzz.

Unfortunately, political messages also operate under somewhat different rules than ordinary commercial marketing, which helps explain why stopping them can feel like a game of Whac-A-Mole.

How They Get Your Number
One common source is voter registration records. Depending on the state, information from voter files can be made available to political parties, candidates and other authorized organizations.

Political data companies can also compile information from donations, petitions, surveys and other sources. Give your number to one political organization and it can potentially find its way into databases used well beyond that particular campaign.

What Works Right Now
Start by replying STOP. Federal rules recognize STOP as a valid way to revoke consent for robotexts where consent is required. Legitimate political texting platforms should also use it to remove you from that sender's list.

The problem is that stopping one organization doesn't stop another, which is why the messages may continue from different numbers.

You can also forward unwanted texts to 7726 (SPAM). This gives your wireless carrier information it can use to identify and filter abusive texting campaigns.

On an iPhone, Filter Unknown Senders can keep unfamiliar numbers out of your primary message list. Android users using Google Messages can turn on its spam protection.

Most importantly, don't click links in unsolicited political texts. Political messages are easy for scammers to impersonate, especially when they're asking for donations. If you want to donate or interact with a candidate, go directly to their official website.

The Political Texting Loophole
Federal rules place more restrictions on certain automated political texts than messages individually initiated by people.

That distinction helped fuel what's known as "peer-to-peer" texting, where campaign workers or volunteers can initiate large numbers of individual messages using specialized platforms.

That's one reason blocking numbers isn't particularly effective. The next message may simply arrive from another number.

Getting Ahead of It
The best long-term strategy is keeping your primary number out of databases whenever possible.

Consider using a secondary number, such as a free Google Voice number, for petitions, surveys, sweepstakes, event registrations and other situations where you don't need to provide your primary number.

Calls and texts can still reach your existing phone, but your real number stays one step removed from lists that may eventually be shared or sold.

What's New This Election Cycle
Carriers have tightened requirements for organizations sending large volumes of texts from standard 10-digit numbers, making it more difficult for anonymous bulk senders to simply blast millions of messages.

But technology is creating a new wrinkle: AI-powered political texting.

Campaigns can now use AI systems capable of carrying on personalized, back-and-forth conversations with voters at enormous scale.

Think of them as digital campaign volunteers that never sleep and can simultaneously carry on thousands of conversations.

There isn't a magic switch that stops political texts entirely. But combining STOP, 7726, spam filtering and a secondary phone number can turn the flood into something much more manageable.