Have you fatigued yet on all the noise around the midterm elections? Are you still getting a lot of text messages from political groups?
Try pulling your name and contact info from the lists of prominent voter registration data brokers and see if the messages stop!
Here’s how to do it…
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How to put an end to political texts
All last week, I was getting a lot of text messages urging my support for candidates in tight political races and I wanted it to stop.
So, last night, I did some Internet sleuthing and found out about a couple of possible ways to do a blanket opt-out request to shut those messages down cold.
E-Merges opt-out
The first site I stumbled on was E-Merges, which is one of the leading compilers of voter registration lists. So I went through the opt-out process, which you’ll find linked below.
In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t yet know how effective this is since my opt-out request was only put in last night. But fingers crossed!
The E-Merges website says the company has been selling “registered voter lists to permitted users, such as, political campaigns, pollsters, political action committees, universities, and researchers” dating all the way back to 2000.
The lists it sells come in two basic flavors: standard and quantum enhanced.
The standard list is “unenhanced” and has little more data than a county board of elections would have.
However, the quantum enhances list is “super-charged with over 200 demographic-specific appends, e.g., phones, income, race, etc.” for the purpose of “precise targeting.”
E-Merges makes opting out fairly easy. You can even do it for a deceased family member or for someone in your legal guardianship or for whom you hold power of attorney.
Ready to opt out? Get started here.
L2 opt-out
The second site I found online was for L2 Political.
L2, which has been active for more than 40 years, claims to be “the country’s leading provider of high quality enhanced voter data and customized data processing,” according to its website.
The outfit sells a broad range of products including National Voter File, L2 VoterMapping and outreach data including email lists, mailing lists, phone lists and more — all culled from your contact info.
When it comes to opting out, you have to do a bit of digging on the L2 website to figure out how to get it done.
I went down a dead end road at first. That’s because the general email they list on their privacy notice bounced back to me.
So that left the option of either calling the company at 800-842-5478 or emailing the Vice President of Sales & Marketing, whose contact info is listed prominently in the footer of many individual pages on the L2 site.
When I tried the latter approach, I received an email back within minutes confirming my info was scrubbed from their databases. Talk about the human touch!
Conclusion
The reality is it’s like playing a game of Whack-a-Mole when it comes to getting your info off these lists. You might remove it from one marketer’s database, but how about the 20 others it’s still on?
I have no illusions that the process of getting my name off these lists once and for all will be easy.
But I am hopeful to at least stem the tide of political messaging. We’ll see how it goes…
In the end, maybe the best way to handle those annoying political texts is simply to reply “STOP” when they are sent to your phone!
