COLUMBUS, Ohio — Political campaigns love them and voters hate them. And unless the law is changed, there’s not much you can do to stop them.
Mass-sent political text messages have proliferated since a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that loosened consent requirements for commonly used mass-texting systems. The following year, campaigns and other political groups sent more than 15 billion political texts ahead of the 2022 mid-term election, according to RoboKiller, an app that blocks spam texts and calls.
Today, campaigns buy and swap lists of potential texting targets obtained by data brokers and compiled from a combination of state voter records, third-party consumer data collected by retailers, lists of verified cell phone numbers and other big data sources that are widely available for the right price.
Most use the lists to solicit small-dollar contributions – an increasingly important part of political fundraising – though campaigns and political parties also use them to try to win over voters.
Sometimes, voters appear on one campaign’s list because they signed up for another one. But sometimes not. And once you’re on a list somewhere, it’s almost impossible to completely get off. That’s because federal law that created “do not call” registries specifically exempts political messages. Databases include details like donation history, projected partisan affiliation, income range and political engagement. All these factors inform which voters campaigns target and how they target them.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer heard from dozens of readers recently who described getting inundated with annoying political text messages ahead of this year’s presidential election. Many said there should be an easier way to block them. Some said they didn’t mind them, but had a hard time telling whether the messages were legitimate.
“I get it from democratic campaigns across the country because I’ve donated a couple of times. It makes me wish I never had, although I’m usually big into putting my money where my mouth is,” said one reader.
“Ugh! It’s a mess! I get them from US senators and representatives begging for my money from as far away as CA! It’s crazy!” said another.
“I’m blue to my core but I swear, if I see one more message from Act Blue I’m going straight out of my mind,” said a third.
Political campaigns like using text messages to raise money because they’re cheap and they work. Chris Redfern, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said a mass-released text message can be composed and sent in minutes. Texting firms can tell who opens the messages, and data shows that unlike spam emails, many people do.
“I often say if it didn’t work, we wouldn’t be getting a text,” Redfern said. “If sending fruit baskets worked, we would all get a fruit basket.”
Bryan Osbourne, a Republican consultant in Columbus who specializes in political text messages, said campaigns aim to collect just $25 to $50 per donor to break even on their costs.
“It’s a pretty cold return on investment calculation,” Osbourne said.
The easiest way to end up on a texting list is to make a political donation. Campaigns collect contact information for contributors and make a note on that person’s file that they’re willing to give money. That contributor’s information eventually makes its way to a larger list of potential donors.
Once you’re on that list, it’s almost impossible to get off.
Federal law requires political texts to include and abide by opt-out language – commonly telling a recipient they can stop the messages by typing STOP. This can get a voter off that campaign’s list. But that campaign might have multiple vendors, each with their own lists, and so the messages could continue. Removing the voter from the campaign’s list also doesn’t take them off the master list where a voter’s information is stored, sold and traded.
“I think the challenge in why voters continue to receive these messages is because when you opt out of receiving a text message from a particular campaign, it doesn’t necessarily opt you out from another campaign or organization from also sending you a message,” Osbourne said.
Osbourne said his firm, Strategy Group for Media near Columbus, keeps a master opt-out list that apply to all its campaigns and clients. He said it’s wise for political firms to do the same, not only to avoid annoying potential supporters but also to avoid getting fined or investigated by the Federal Communications Commission, which enforces telemarketing law.
But generally, Osbourne said regulations haven’t kept up with texting. The 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision, for instance, regulated robocalls while leaving mass texting unaddressed, he said.
In that case, Noah Duguid sued Facebook after the company kept sending him security messages even though he didn’t have an account there. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Facebook didn’t violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, the main piece of federal regulation for telemarketing, which restricts the use of “automatic telephone dialing systems,” because the law defines those systems as randomly generating phone numbers. Facebook’s system automatically messaged people, but did so by working off a stored list of phone numbers.
Today, FCC says political campaigns can send text messages to recipients without their prior consent as long as they’re sent “manually.” This carves out what several political operatives told cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer is the most common form of unsolicited texting.
“The implication is that the medium lives in a gray area,” Osbourne said. “And campaigns and candidates will use that to their advantage until there’s more specific regulation about it.”
RoboKiller, the spam blocking app, reported that for the midterm elections in 2022, 70% of political text messages contained Republican-coded language. But political texting consultants said they believed both parties approached the issue similarly. If voters feel like they’re getting more messages from one side than the other, that’s probably because campaigns are targeting them based on their past campaign giving or modeled political views.
Redfern, the former Ohio Democratic Party chairman, said he’d gotten 17 text messages from Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign since Friday. He doesn’t find them annoying, he said, because he’s acclimated to scrolling through unwanted messages.
“Don’t want to be on a list? Stop giving money,” Redfern said.
As a practitioner, Osbourne said he views campaign texts differently from others. He doesn’t like to block them because he likes knowing what others are doing.
But, Osbourne, who generally focuses on using text messages to communicate with supporters rather than to ask for money, said he advises his clients that less is more.
“A text message to your donors and volunteers about an upcoming event is extremely fruitful,” Osbourne said. “Those donors have buy-in to your campaign and it’s timely. Whereas sending a text message every week about what’s in the news, that to me seems like too much.”
Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
