Political text messages frustrating recipients
A couple of beers, a laptop and some inexpensive software was all it took to blast out tens of thousands of text messages to voters.
As Election Day approaches on Nov. 6, cellphones across Florida will be buzzing as campaigns send millions of unsolicited texts to voters with the assistance of new apps and programs.
Some people find the messages annoying, but political consultants say texting voters is the break-out mode of communications for the 2018 elections.
GOP political consultant Alex Patton says he and two of his friends sent 33,000 texts to educate voters about a Gainesville ballot initiative while sipping beers at a local brewery.
“It’s highly targetable,” says Patton, owner of Ozean Media. “It’s inexpensive. Until we screw it up, it’s the Holy Grail.”
Not everyone on the receiving end of the text messages likes them. Shelly Soffer, 40, of Coconut Creek, says her phone has been inundated with political text messages that she never signed up to receive.
“I’m annoyed beyond belief,” Soffer says. “They are presumptuous and obnoxious and borderline harassment. I never gave my cellphone number out.”
Many recipients think the unsolicited texts are prohibited by law, but campaigns are using programs that operate in a gray area of a federal consumer-protection statute.
Andrew Gillum, who pulled off a shocking upset in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, sent out more than 1.5 million text messages to 750,000 people, according to Hustle, one of four leading companies providing texting support to campaigns.
Gillum’s campaign used text messaging to boost event attendance, chase vote-bymail ballots, encourage early voting and get out the vote on primary day, according to Hustle.
The technology also opens the door to dirty political tricks — from the spreading of fake news to impersonating a candidate to antagonize voters.
An election complaint was recently filed regarding political text messages that awakened Plantation residents in the middle of the night earlier this month. The messages told recipients that mayoral candidate Lynn Stoner had the support of the city’s police officers.
But Stoner and the law enforcement group say they had nothing to do with the poorly timed texts that awoke residents and left them annoyed.
Campaigns famously entered the texting era when former President Barack Obama announced Joe Biden as his running mate in a bulk text message sent to supporters in 2008.
But campaigns have turned to a new technology called peer-to-peer texting that is different. Peer-to-peer text messages are not automated spam messages sent in bulk at once using random numbers.
Volunteers must hit send for each message, but helpful features available in peer-topeer apps allow a single person to ping thousands of people an hour. Cellphone numbers are gleaned through public records and other resources.
Because of this, peer-topeer texting doesn’t fall under the same Federal Communications Commission rules as automated text messaging.
Campaigns say they don’t need consent to initiate a conversation. The Federal Election Commission has advised that text messages don’t need a “paid for” disclaimer because cellphones “have limits on both the size and the length of the information that can be conveyed.”
That advisory opinion was written in 2002 when flip-phones were the norm. Partisan gridlock has prevented the FEC from updating its rules to provide clear direction on small digital ads, said Corey Goldstone, a spokesman with the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog organization.
“Campaigns often exploit the ambiguity left open by the FEC,” Goldstone said.
State law exempts text messages up to 200 characters from disclaimer requirements, said Sarah Revell, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State.
While some campaigns are using peer-to-peer texting to mobilize voters and enlist volunteers, others are using the technology to attack opponents.
In late September, Florida voters with Jewish last names received text messages accusing Gillum’s campaign of being anti-Semitic. Another round of text messages suggested Gillum, who is mayor of Tallahassee, may be under an FBI investigation, a key talking point of his GOP opponent Ron DeSantis.
The Friends of Ron DeSantis political committee has paid at least $268,000 for messaging services to a company owned by Elnatan Rudolph, a political operative and protégé of political dirty trickster Roger Stone, according to a South Florida Sun Sentinel analysis of campaign finance records.
Another message sent to voters during the Democratic primary displayed a photo of candidate and former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham and the flashing words “Gwen Graham Bad!! for the Environment.” The text didn’t disclose who had sent the message.
Text messages are read more than 90 percent of the time, says Rick Asnani, a Palm Beach County political consultant who works mostly with state and local candidates.
The technology works in an era when spam folders filter email and streaming services shift television consumption habits, he says.
“You can’t avoid it because you have your phone around you for the entire time you are awake,” Asnani says. “A lot of times, it is right by your bedside.”
Peer-to-peer texting boosted Bernie Sanders’ grassroots 2016 presidential campaign and has been cited as one of the reasons for underdog Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s success in her bid for Congress in New York City.
Peer-to-peer texting is particularly helpful for local candidates with limited resources running in city council, school board and judicial races in South Florida’s extremely expensive media market, Asnani says.
The messages can be sent for as little as 6 cents per text, while a direct mailer can cost as much as 65 cents.
Companies break down on the partisan lines with Hustle and Relay on the left and RumbleUp and Opn Sesame on the right.
More texts are on the way. NextGen America, a political organization founded by liberal California billionaire Tom Steyer, is bankrolling a campaign that has sent more than 23,000 text messages to remind voters about Election Day.
The P2P Alliance, a coalition of leading peer-to-peer texting providers, is asking the Federal Communications Commission to clarify that their services are not subject to consumer protections outlined in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits autodialing services from contacting people without permission.
The alliance wrote in its petition that their text messages are the “types of communications consumers want and expect.”
Thomas Peters, CEO of RumbleUP, says the services really do differ from spam text messaging. Volunteers can keep tabs on responses and answer questions.
“It really is personal,” he says. “Every text message is sent by a human being. The magic happens when someone asks, ‘Is this really Stacy,” and the person replies, ‘Yes it is.’ ”
Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Mast’s campaign used RumbleUp to remind people about early-voting dates for the primary. Mast, who represents northern Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, easily won the nomination.
Peters says he’d support some regulations on the industry, such as a Do Not Text List, because voters could get overwhelmed with unwanted messages, lessening the effectiveness of his service.
Asnani, the Palm Beach County political consultant, says he expects the messages will become a fixture of election season as long as voters are glued to their phones and reading their texts.
Campaigns by their nature have always been somewhat intrusive — from candidates knocking on doors to robocalls to incessant ads blaring on television, he says.
“Voters are going to have to get used to this being the new way of communication,” Asnani says. “The good news is once the election is over the text messages will stop.”
At least until the next one, anyway.