How to quiet the flood of political texts before Election Day

Election Day is Nov. 3, and many phones are buzzing nonstop with campaign texts. Early estimates suggest Americans may receive upward of 60 billion political texts this cycle, about 170 per person. You cannot make them all vanish, but you can hide many of them and report the ones that break the rules.

Why the texts keep coming

Campaigns get your number from voter records. All 50 states let campaigns and political groups use voter data for election purposes. If you listed a phone number when you registered, it can be on file and open to them.

Contact lists also get shared with parties and allied candidates. A donation to one candidate in one state can land your number on a list used by another campaign elsewhere. Once you are on these lists, it is hard to get off. For comparison, 2022 saw a reported 15 billion political texts and 384 million political calls.

Hide the texts

Your phone can filter messages from senders it does not know. This does not stop campaigns from texting you, but it keeps the messages out of sight.

• iPhone: Settings, Apps, Messages, then Unknown Senders. Turn on Screen Unknown Senders.
• On iPhone, also turn on Filter Spam to move spam to a separate list.
• Android: open Messages by Google, tap the three dots, then Settings, then Spam protection.
• On Android, turn on Enable spam protection.

Block and report

You can block numbers one at a time. On iPhone, tap the unknown number, then tap Block Contact. On Android, tap the contact, choose the Info icon or Details, then pick Block/report spam.

To report unwanted texts, forward them to 7726, which spells SPAM on a keypad. That reports them to your wireless carrier.

What the rules say

Political campaign texts are exempt from the National Do Not Call Registry. Campaigns still have to follow Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules. If you think robocalls or robotexts broke those rules, you can file an informal complaint at fcc.gov/complaints, online, by mail or by phone.

You can also ask a campaign directly. Messages usually come from volunteers, so you can call and politely ask to be taken off the contact list. That should end the messages from that campaign. If it does not, an FCC complaint is the next step.