# My Journey to the Center of America’s Political Spam Text Hell

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/my-journey-to-the-center-of-americas-political-spam-text-hell/
- Published: 2026-11-02T11:00:00+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-02T11:15:42+00:00
- Original publisher: Wired
- Original article: https://www.wired.com/story/my-journey-to-the-center-of-americas-political-spam-text-hell/
- Topics: Elections, Politics

## Key points

- A journalist received 725 political fundraising texts this year.
- Most were meant for a relative who had donated small amounts.
- Repeated opt-out requests failed to stop messages from multiple numbers.

## Summary

An American journalist investigated why political fundraising texts kept flooding his phone, even though he had never donated and had repeatedly asked campaigns to stop. The messages were mostly intended for a California relative with a similar-looking donor profile, exposing how fundraising operations can misidentify people and continue contacting them across multiple numbers.

The journalist counted 725 texts in 2026, including more than 190 in the first 20 days of October and 21 on 14 October. His relative had made about 160 donations since 2017, totalling roughly $1,700, with a median gift of $6; the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent 60 texts despite receiving just one $5 donation from him. Many messages linked to ActBlue and included tracking codes that could help identify the fundraising appeal and sometimes the source of a recipient’s contact details.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.