Political text messages anger voters ahead of election

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There are still 3 days left before the presidential election ends, but people are tired of receiving unwanted text messages.

During this election season, people on social media complained about the excessive number of text messages they received from political action committees.

Please establish a federal ban on political campaign text messages.

Please.

— Edgar McGregor (@edgarrmcgregor) October 29, 2024

Unfortunately, it appears that the only remedy at this time to combat these text messages is to issue a TCPA “letter of demand” to the campaigns sending the text messages.

Via Mercury News

A: Texts are considered illegal spam if they are sent by a commercial organization using an auto-dialer without your consent. But political texts are different. They are governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which does not require consumers to “opt-in” if they are submitted manually.

But having a human press “submit” as a trigger for releasing thousands of texts into the air clearly violates the spirit of the TCPA.

— Scott Wallsten

If they send you a message from a campaign and you are not interested, reply STOP. You can also report the sender by forwarding the text to 7726 (or “SPAM”). If they persist or you believe they have violated federal rules, you can file an informal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission at fcc.gov/complaints.

Make sure you are on the national Do Not Call Registry. Political texts are exempt, so this won’t stop them, but it does give you the right to file a TCPA “demand letter” with the campaign, notifying them of the alleged violation. This is an easy way to get them to stop because TCPA fines are very expensive. The more people do this, the more campaigns will reconsider whether text messaging is a viable channel.

Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc., who specializes in California voter data and software tools, told Mercury News that the best way to avoid political texts is to vote as early as possible.

“Voting. We celebrate every day of everyone who has returned a ballot. This also means that we know millions of voters who still have ballots in their hands. And so as we get closer to Election Day, you will have a lot of campaigns sending text messages to voters who still have not returned their ballots.”