- Upcoming election has led to a surge in robocalls and text messages.
- Residents express significant annoyance with constant political outreach.
- Messages often target voters based on party affiliation, with some being quite personal.
- Political consultancies use public voter data to send millions of messages.
- Cost of these outreach efforts is very low, making them widespread.
- Watch video above to hear more.
For your convenience, the skimmable summary above is generated with the assistance of AI and fact checked by our team prior to publication. Read the full story as originally reported below.
It seems like none of us could dodge the robocalls and text messages during election season.
“You know with these calls, they’ll say if you're a republican or democrat?” Said resident Angie Rosado.
Some are little more extreme, check out this text FOX 47 News Larry Wallace got from “Jackie”, a former Donald Trump supporter, who said she will not be supporting the former president this time around The message also came along with a selfie.
Adrian Hemond is the CEO of Grassroots Midwest. He said this election season alone his company has sent out more than a million phone calls and text messages to voters, and getting your phone numbers to complete this task is pretty easy. It all starts with the qualified voter file, that every registered voter has on record.
“It's a mater of public information, whether you voted in previous elections,” Hemond said. “So, we get a good idea what your voting data is like. So then from there, we could buy personal data about you like phone numbers, desired charities, basically all information your viewers give away when they download app.”
The cost to do this? About a penny per person and with it being so cheap, Hemond said you shouldn't expect the calls to stop, if anything, you should expect an increase since election day is right around the corner.
