Ending political robocalls and robotexts

In Sunday’s letters to the editor at the Kansas City Star, one reader went off on “unsolicited political advertisements” on his cellphone. Richard Ong of Overland Park, who wrote the letter, noted that with primary season and general elections upon us, political ads are only going to get worse.

While he accepted that political ads on TV and radio are going to happen whenever we choose to turn those devices on, and that they even pay for the programming we watch, the reality with our cellphones is not the same. Lamenting that it’s “nearly impossible” to block all the robocalls, Ong concludes his letter by encouraging others to vote against candidates and campaigns that use these “distasteful tactics” until these “unsolicited interruptions in our life” are made illegal.

Legislation surrounding political robocalls and texts is a bit interesting, and while these calls and texts may annoy many people, the legislation may be something very few people know about or understand.

Unlike telemarketers and other spam calls, campaign calls are exempt from the Do Not Call List requirements, so even if you add your number to the list, you will likely still get political robocalls. The good news is that, in general, these robocalls and robotexts sent to mobile phones require consent, with some exceptions. Consent is not needed for landlines.

Political robotexts are considered a type of call, falling under the robocall rules so long as the messages are generated through autodialing. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in order for an intended recipient to receive a political text message without the party’s prior express consent, the sender cannot use autodialing technology, and must manually dial them.

On top of needing consent, all pre-recorded voice messages, campaign-related or otherwise, must include the following identification information:

• The identity of the business, individual, or other entity initiating the call must be clearly stated at the beginning of the prerecorded message.

• If the calling party is a business or corporate entity, the entity’s official business name must be stated clearly at the beginning of the message.

• The telephone number of the calling party must be provided, either during or after the message.

It should be noted that legislation banning such campaign practices could be detrimental to new politicians running for office as this can be a great way for people to stay in the loop about a potential new candidate in their district. However, there are things that you can do to prevent unwanted robocalls before looking to the government to fix the issue, such as checking with your wireless provider for call-blocking features or using robocall blocking services like NoMoRobo or RoboKiller which work by scanning a blocklist of known robocallers. Incoming calls get compared to the blocklist after the first ring and hangs up on the call before you get bothered.

Political robocalls can be annoying, however, there are steps we can take to limit the amount we receive in 2024, and we can go to the free-market, not the government, to do just that.