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There are still 3 days left until the conclusion of the Presidential election, but people are fed up with receiving unsolicited text messages.
During this election season, people on social media have complained about the inordinate amount of text messages they’ve received from political action committees.
Please put a federal ban on political campaign text messages.
Please.
— Edgar McGregor (@edgarrmcgregor) October 29, 2024
Unfortunately, it appears that, as of now, the only remedy against those text messages is to issue a TCPA “demand letter” to campaigns sending the texts.
Via Mercury News
A: Texts are considered to be illegal spam if sent by a commercial entity using an autodialer, without your consent. But political texts are different. They’re governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which does not require consumers to “opt in,” if sent manually.
But having a human press “send” as the trigger to release thousands of texts into the ether obviously violates the spirit of the TCPA.
— Scott Wallsten
If a campaign texts you and you’re not interested, reply with STOP. You can also report the sender by forwarding texts to 7726 (or “SPAM”). If they persist, or you think they’ve violated federal rules, you can file an informal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission at fcc.gov/complaints.
Make sure you’re on the national Do Not Call Registry. Political texts are exempt, so that won’t stop them, but it does give you standing to file a TCPA “demand letter” to the campaign, notifying them of the alleged violation. That’s an easy way to get them to stop because TCPA fines are really expensive. The more people that do it, the more campaigns will reexamine whether texting is a viable channel.
Paul Mitchel of Political Data Inc., who specializes in California voter data and software tools, told the Mercury News that the best way to avoid political texts is to vote as early as you can.
“Vote. We flag, every day, everyone who has returned a ballot. That also means we know the millions of voters who still have a ballot in their hands. And so as it gets closer to Election Day, you’re going to have a lot of campaigns texting the bejesus out of voters who still haven’t returned their ballots.”