CHEEKTOWAGA, NY (WKBW) — Some voters say they are getting bombarded with multiple political texts each day and at all hours of the day.
Are you getting political texts?
“Enough’s enough,” declared Jack Refermat.
The Cheektowaga resident said he's annoyed with all the political texts he's been receiving.
He was in line for early voting at the Cheektowaga Senior Center Friday.
“Probably you know — three four a day at least at all different hours,” Refermat replied.
“You can just ignore them if you're not interested,” stated Lauren Schultz.
The Amherst woman said she actually signs up to receive texts because she is “politically engaged.”
“Are you getting a lot?” Buckley asked. “Yeah — yeah — like multiple times a day,” responded Schultz.
But two Rochester men are feed up and filed federal lawsuits against President Trump.
Both state they never gave consent for their phone numbers to the campaign and they are on the “Do not call registry”.
If you are getting political texts and wondering where they got your number from — if you're registered to vote political campaigns have access to your information.
“They have access to a ton of information,” remarked Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor, political science, University at Buffalo. “Obviously, they have the voter file, but there are a lot of commercial firms out there that append any kind of publicly available information to the voter file."
Neiheisel said campaigns always try to “gain an edge” by using whatever new technology is available.
“I highly doubt that those lawsuits are going to go anywhere. There are actually quite a few protections for political speech,” Neiheisel said.
According to Robokiller Americans are expected to receive more than three billion political text messages from both the republican and democratic parties this election season.
“They know that they work — at least at the margins. I’m not sure if that magic number is three texts or 20 texts, but they tend to boost turnout among the people you contact,” explained Neiheisel.
Margaret Reiner of Cheektowaga says even though she’s not registered with any political party, she's still getting campaign texts every day.
“Because I'm not with either side, so it's just all of them,” Reiner noted.
Terrie Sheridan of Cheektowaga received a political text while waiting in line to vote.
“You said you just got a political text?” Buckley questioned. “I did,” replied Sheridan. “What did you do?”, asked Buckley. “Deleted and blocked the number,” Sheridan laughed.
Sheridan says she doesn't need a text to tell her who to vote for
“My minds already made up — it's not going to change anything anyway,” Sheridan responded.
