Many of our cell phones have been battered this election season with a torrent of pleas for moolah. I vote mostly Democratic/Independent, so my flogging by fundraisers comes from Democratic candidates and liberal-leaning causes.

For 17 days (Oct. 14-30), I logged the source of 83 of such texts on my Verizon cell phone account and observed a often overly aggressive system with the senders frequently ignoring restrictions the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claims to impose on all “political campaign-related autodialed or prerecorded voice calls, including autodialed live calls, autodialed texts, and prerecorded voice messages.”

The restraints the FCC says it imposes, as required by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, are these:

• First, “robocalls and robotexts to mobile phones require prior consent” from the recipient.
• Second, the recipient, “can revoke consent at any time and in any reasonable manner, such as replying ‘stop’ to a text or asking not to be called again on a voice call.”

Well, nobody asked my consent to fire 83 fundraising texts to me in two weeks. The best I could do in this game of whack-a-mole was return the STOP text then block the number.

I could not win that game, of course.

To start with, about half of the 83 texts came through the broad Democratic fundraising platform called ActBlue, where all manner of Democratic candidates can secure a channel for raising their cash.

As a retired wage-earner, I donate only sparingly and to a select few candidates, nearly always in my state of Virginia. But it appears that any of the ActBlue entities who had my cell number shared it with any Democratic-leaning identity in the nation who wanted it.

Share it they did! My texts came from 19 states coast to coast and, of course, Washington, D.C., from where U.S. Senate members, the Democratic Governors Association, Democratic National Committee and others operate.

My Virginia candidates, especially Sen. Tim Kaine and my district’s Rep. Gerry Connolly, might have been expected to hit my cell phone the most. In fact, I heard from them regularly in recent months on legislation and policy; fundraising, too, but not excessively, and I did not block those phone numbers or email addresses since it’s best for me to stay in touch with them. Reasons for the lighter touch from Virginians were their almost certain re-election, so they were less desperate for cash, but also fewer entities were thus flocking to them from across the country to text little old me to raise money for them.

On the other side of my text message chart were some candidates I favor but who seemed to be skirting FCC rules.

• The campaign of Texas Senate candidate Colin Alred sent me an email. I responded and asked to be unsubscribed. Then the text messages began rolling in and I would respond STOP and block the number and other would come from another number or another source begging for cash for Alred. I blocked 11 of them; more to some, I suppose.
• One ActBlue player, Moms Fed Up, like some others, sent me an automatic assurance I was “unsubscribed” in response to my STOP message, and I then blocked the number as well, but soon got another text from the group using a telephone number with the final two digits changed.
• I had a similar experience with Elect Democratic Women, whom I asked to STOP, immediately blocked, but soon got another money request from that group using a similar phone number and blocked that one; then a third one from them using a third number.
• Other such whack-a-mole fundraisers texting me included Elect Dems Now, Pro-Choice Women, Pro-Choice Dems and Demand Justice.

At least among Democratic voters, I know my phone and I are not alone in the storm. CNN reporters tell about Proofpoint Research findings estimating U.S. cell phone users got around 45 billion campaign texts in just five months (January-May) of this year, compared with 15 billion for the entire 2020 election season.

One might ask: With this tsunami of political texts hammering our cell phones, what about those FCC restraints? The advice on that question I see from news outlets is to file a complaint with the FCC if you have trouble stopping unwanted campaign messages.

Yes, anyone can file a complaint with the FCC, but sorry, folks, that agency won’t do anything directly to help you.

After describing the restrains on such messaging and pointing to the spot online to file a complaint, the FCC advises to first contact your carrier for help, then says: “We do not resolve individual complaints on certain issues, including … unwanted calls or texts, including robocalls, unsolicited faxes and similar issues.” Instead, the FCC is supposed to forward our complaints to our telephone carrier to see if the carrier can help us out. (I haven’t filed an FCC complaint on campaign texts, but if I do maybe the FCC will send me a good luck message with a smile emoji or something.)

Other observations:

• In campaign fundraising, emails are so yesteryear. In my 17 days of note-taking and 83 campaign text, I got only about 25 emails, and three-fourths of them were from two sources: Dan Osborn (independent Nebraska Senate candidate) and the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, and the ones from those two were all within a three-day period.
• American voters might be sheltered from the onslaught I have observed because they vote with conservatives and/or they have guarded their phone number better than I have. I don’t have enough information to know how Republican voters and campaign texts are doing. Just a few among my family and friends who vote Republican and have commented to me observe the drop-off in campaign emails versus 2022 and say yes, more text messages, but probably not the severe increase I’ve witnessed.