WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Election season brings with it a lot of political messages, including a lot of text messages arriving on your phone. These messages are from candidates, campaigns, and groups asking for your vote and financial contribution. With Election Day quickly approaching, these efforts will likely intensify.
Sending bulk texts has become an easy way for campaigns to target and reach voters. With about three weeks until the Nov. 5 election, they are deploying far-reaching strategies more frequently. Along with this comes federal regulations on how text messages can be used in election campaigns.
Michael Smith, a political science professor at Emporia State University, said political text messages from politically active people on various caller lists offer incentives to vote or solicit money. He said that he was being showered with
Smith said there are several reasons why campaigns prefer texting strategies.
“One of them is that it’s very convenient,” Smith said. “This software exists to take a database of phone numbers and allow you to send explosive texts with a few keystrokes.”
Smith said this allows him to look at people’s careers, issue positions and locations to target the people who will receive the message. He said political texts are also usually not considered as bothersome and intrusive as a typical spam call.
The Federal Communications Commission says federal law regulates text message campaigns, similar to political robocalls. When it comes to robotext, prior consent is one of the rules. Don’t auto-dial and send texts to that number unless that number is opted in to receive messages. In some cases, that can happen through a box you click when signing up for something related to a political campaign or organization. This does not apply to messages sent manually.
The FCC says the campaign is also supposed to honor requests if users reply to these messages with phrases like “stop.”
You can report unwanted texts by forwarding the message to 7726 or by reporting it to the FCC’s Online Complaint Center.
In the case of political messages, a national “do not call” list will not work to stop them, as political calls and messages are filtered out. iPhone and Android messaging apps have settings that allow you to filter spam. The Better Business Bureau is also warning people to be wary of these texts as political fraud increases in the lead up to the election.
Tips for blocking, filtering, and reporting messages:
For iPhone — https://support.apple.com/en-euro/guide/iphone/iph203ab0be4/17.0/ios/17.0#iphb62e224e4
For Android — https://support.google.com/messages/answer/9061432?hl=ja&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid.
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