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Political texts inundating phones
Is your phone blowing up with political text messages, especially with one night to go before Election Day? If so, you're far from being alone. FOX 13's Aaron Mesmer reports.
TAMPA, Fla. - Campaigns are blasting record volumes of political text messages directly to mobile screens across the nation as Election Day approaches.
Surge in campaign messages
What we know:
Campaign outreach through mobile devices has become a dominant election tool, with estimates indicating groups sent over 60 billion messages between 2020 and 2024.
Some recipients report hearing audio drops from major Hollywood figures, including TV star Ice-T.
RoboKiller, a call-and-text blocking application, logged roughly 15 billion political texts in 2022. Political texting platform RumbleUp projected campaign message traffic would hit 25 billion in 2024.
Earlier metrics from 2018 recorded roughly 350 million political texts, showing massive operational growth across several election cycles.
Voter outreach tactics
Why you should care:
University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett projects this cycle will break existing volume records for political mobile messaging.
"It's all about, one, reaching out to voters in a cost-effective way, and two, doing it in a way that's most likely to actually be looked at by the voters," Jewett said.
Campaign organizers harvest phone numbers directly from state voter registration databases or purchase phone directories through third-party commercial data brokers. Teams also employ artificial intelligence software to customize and deliver tailored messaging batches to individual recipients.
Stopping unwanted texts
What you can do:
Cell phone users have no guaranteed option to halt political messaging because campaigns hold a legal exemption from the National Do Not Call Registry.
Recipients can submit the word "STOP" to prompt unsubscribe protocols, manually block incoming phone numbers or adjust system settings to screen unknown senders.
Missing cycle details
What we don't know:
Campaign tracking services have not yet published the confirmed total number of text messages delivered for this current political cycle.
State regulators have not detailed whether stricter mobile spam rules will be implemented for future election runs.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from metrics collected and published by RoboKiller and RumbleUp, who track telecommunication and campaign messaging data, as well as an interview conducted with UCF political science professor Aubrey Jewett.