I donated to the Harris/Walz campaign a while back, and you know what that means: I’ve been inundated with texts/emails begging me for money a dozen times a day. I tolerated them because I support the Democrats, and I was planning to donate again soon.
I finally had to unsubscribe/block/delete all their messages, because right now they are constantly pushing the Oprah endorsement. No. Oprah is a soft-brained snake oil salesman who got rich promoting feel-good nonsense, and who inflicted Dr Oz and Dr Phil on the world. Go away.
I’m still voting for Harris/Walz in November, but I am not going to stomach Oprah cluttering up my in-box.
The secret is to use a separate email account for such things.
I donated to the Harris-Walz campaign and to Angela Alsobrooks who’s running for Senator in MD and was getting emails and texts from both campaigns. The local one was worse because they were sending about 5 texts a day.
My late wife had donated previously. She died in 2022. As recently as a couple of weeks ago she was still getting mail soliciting donations. I may have finally stopped that by send three successive letters back in their own return envelope pointing out that she is dead, with increasing expressions of annoyance that they were still sending them to her.
Fess up…how did you “unsubscribe” or whatever you did? I’ve donated in the past, tho not yet this year, and I get a constant stream of solicitations as mail and text messages from lots of different campaigns. I replied “STOP” in its many forms to which I will get a reply that the messages are stopped but I still get messages from lots of other candidates. And the unsubscribe link I just tried ended up being confusing and asking for more money. I may also donate soon, but would like to stop the harangue.
Reginald Selkirk — “The secret is to use a separate email account for such things.” I thought of that but unfortunately after I had made a donation using my main email account and (maybe) phone number. I don’t see any way to change it.
I had to stop giving money to Doctors Without Borders – which I think is a shame, because I believe they’re a good organisation – because they wouldn’t take my money without signing me up with a phone number, and they wouldn’t stop calling and texting.
robro,
Surely your email client has rules you can apply.
They can send all the emails they want, but you get to decide whether they get through or not.
(Me, I can filter messages at the ISP level or at my local client level)
robro
In the UK it would be illegal for a candidate or campaign to pass on your details to anyone else, it that not the case in the USA? I actually got the person who is now the local Liberal Democrat to stop sending me emails by pointing out that I had never given her my details, yes I had emailed her predecessor, but that did not give her the right to use his contacts, and threatening to report her. I probably should have gone ahead with the report regardless, but it was around when I started having chronic pain problems and I didn’t have the spoons.
Churchill: “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
The best part has been the personal emails from Kamala and Tim, imploring that only I can save us from MAGA. I feel special.
John Morales @ #7 — Yep, email isn’t too much of a problem although it’s more spam to scan through to fish out the occasional mis-identified spam. It’s the text messages that are the most annoying.
Jazzlet @ #8 — I have no idea what the law says, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there was nothing about it. But the way it works, I believe, is that they have a centralized organization for donations…ActBlue I believe is the DNC’s main donation farm but there may be others…that sends out donation requests for all the Democratic candidates. Fortunately I don’t get all of them, but I get quite a lot.
I made the mistake of donating to the Vindemann fellow. He seems like a non-robotic person.
As it turned out, of course, his donations are processed through actblue, a bunch of lazy marketing script kiddies who have no value proposition other than to spam donors with endless emails. Fortunately I have a lot of control over my server and can cause all their efforts to go immediately to the junk bucket. Is this the “marketing” of the brave new internet? I expected sellers to reach out to me with beguiling messages, like the sellers of frilly lingerie and machine tools on amazon. Ach! Lazy pols!
In the UK it would be illegal for a candidate or campaign to pass on your details to anyone else, it that not the case in the USA
The US “CAN-SPAM” act was written with helpful input from spammers, who decided to argue that their free speech was infringed by our rights to control what happened to our in-boxes. And, to the sharing of our personal information. “Business associates” turns out to mean “anyone who has clicked on a website that contains a link to anyone you have clicked onto” i.e.: any of the big banner aggregators. Plus, since US politicians are venal and easily corruptible lot, all anti-spam controls have a cut-out for political outreach, i.e.: political marketing. So anyone related to anyone who has ever sold you anything, or told you some bullshit, is welcome to stuff your inbox. There is sound evidence that there exist vendors on amazon and ebay whose business process is to sell you something at a slight discount, and capture your particulars so they can be sold as a business associate for spamming. Presumably the value of such businesses will be in the milliseconds, so someone will aggregate them, go public, and offer a front end to mayflies.
I started donating by mail. Completely bypass ActBlue.
Democrats: “Eat shit or the Nazi will win. Also, do not dare complain, or the Nazi will win. And no criticism, or the Nazi will win.”
JFC.
Every single criticism I see on the internets is prefaced by “I will vote for the Democrats / I want the Democrats to win” because now you can’t say “uh, genocide bad?” without people piling up on you yelling “BUT THE NAZI WILL WIN”.
I have to wonder why they do this. I can see sending an email each election cycle, but more than one in the same election cycle seems pointless, let alone more than one a day. That’s not reminding you that you might want to donate — that’s nagging and it’s likely to turn people off rather than get them to actually donate.
One must also wonder how much money is being wasted on nagging people to donate who already have or who already plan to that could instead have been spent on something useful, such as campaigning in a swing state.