ORLANDO, Fla. — Danny Abernathy is as sick of political calls and texts as you are.
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“It is just a big old pain in the butt,” he told our sister station Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke. “You’re busy working, you’re using your hands. You’ve got to stop and see who’s calling you.”
Abernathy is offended the messages are asking him for money.
“You want the small man to endorse you? How about the big companies out there to endorse you?” he said.
The company Robokiller did a study of the 2022 election year. It says Americans received 15 billion political texts and 384 million calls -- talk about being bombarded.
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Stoogenke decided to call five of the numbers back. While they’re happy to call or text you, it’s hard to get through to them. The calls came up busy, just kept ringing, or didn’t go through.
You may be surprised to learn the Do Not Call list doesn’t apply to political calls and texts.
So how do you stop them? Unfortunately, there’s no one magic way, it may take a combination. Even then, you may be able to limit them, but not totally eliminate them.
Jason’s tips:
- You can block the number. Of course, that doesn’t stop new numbers.
- For texts specifically, you can adjust the settings on your phone to weed out messages from numbers you don’t recognize. Just know that if you limit them to numbers in your contacts list, you may miss some texts from some legitimate texters.
- What about replying “stop” to unsubscribe? If you do that, you may be telling the texter a real person exists and invite more texts. But if you text “stop” and the texter doesn’t, that’s illegal.
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If you do want to donate, go to that campaign and give money directly.
There are two kinds of calls and texts: those dialed manually and those dialed automatically (robocalls and robotexts).
The law is different for each. Politicial campaigns need your permission to robocall or robotext you (and, yes, you may have given it in fine print somewhere without knowing it). They don’t need your permission to manually dial you.
If you got a political call or text you think breaks the law, file a complaint with the FCC.
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