In a previous election cycle, I made the mistake of donating a few thousand dollars to several candidates. Since then, I get spammed through the year, and close to a major election, it's dozens of emails and phone calls and text messages every week.

Thankfully, Gmail catches 99% of the spam emails and my Pixel phone filters out spam texts and calls. It has a built-in Google Assistant mode that screens unknown callers with a robot voice picking up and asking them to describe what they're calling about. Most of the callers just hang up as soon as they hear that, and if they don't and actually say they're calling about so-and-so candidate, I just click the block button.

I tried to switch to iPhone for a few weeks (for iMessage), but the spam problem was SO bad (even with Robocaller and some SMS spam filtering app) that I switched back to Android. Google's spam blocking is phenomenal on the Pixel, but they barely even advertise it. It's an afterthought for them, but a lifesaver for me. My phone would be completely unusable without it.

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In the back of my mind, I keep thinking it'd be cool to have an app that automatically looks up whoever the candidate is running against and automatically donating 10 cents (or however much) to their opponent every time they spam you. "Hi, it sounds like you're running in District _____ against ______. Because of this spam, I've donated 10 cents to your opponent. So far, this app has donated $1,234 to your opponent because of your messages. Goodbye!"

Our government is so corrupt and broken they're never going to fix any of this, so it's up to the technologists and market incentives instead...

I wish anyone from actblue would see this.

I gave a few small donations and foolishly didn’t use a disposable email address. That was over four years ago and I’m still getting over a dozen spam emails a day from candidates I have never even heard of.

Maybe there is some central actblue list I can opt out of but I don’t even think I created an account with them

Never donated a penny since

I donated $20 in 2016 and have regretted it ever since.

In the 2020 election cycle it seemed some of the texts had people behind them, so I’d reply and told them if they kept texting me I’d vote for the opponent out of pure spite. That was actually quite effective, but did have to say it to a half dozen people.

This time around, I keep getting texts asking for $40. Most I report as spam, others I say stop. But it seems these lists are distributed out far and wide, so removing the name from one, or 10, doesn’t do much.

Like you, I will never again donate to a politician and will encourage everyone else to save their money. No one should pay money to be harassed. I’m not sure how they think this is a good idea or will win people over.

I've been interested in donating before, but this is actually the main thing holding me back. I get so little spam and unwanted messages (email and text), and I am trying extremely hard to keep it that way.

So thanks for validating my decision :)

One of the blessings of having a loved one in politics is that I know who is/isn't selling their lists. There's only a small handful of organizations who adhere to a firm "no list buying, no list selling" policy. Whoever you donated to apparently has dreadful data ethics. Once your number is in a major political/nonprofit consultancy's database, they'll happily hand it out to all of their other clients. You have to trust that the campaign you support isn't going to give them that data... which is, of course, impossible to know from the outside.

Note that US law has carve outs for politicians and their campaigns. They are exempt on both email and phone spam as I recall.

Why is it necessary to give them your number if you do a donation? It seems many here have the same negative experiences.

Is it an optional field? If not one could practically enter any digits or can one get punished for that?

That's exactly my experience, except that I used my email instead of my phone number. That one little contribution (maybe $10) caused an endless stream of spam. And of course I forgot to give them a distinct To address after emotions are stirred up after their incendiary propaganda message on the donation page.

Same happened to me, I replied saying I'd vote for Trump if I got another message ... never heard from them again ;)

I think it doesn’t matter if you stop know. I know people still getting spammed today after donating to Obama in 2008.

I had some woman use my email (I have an OG mac.com email), when donating to her local ASPCA.

They sold it to a liberal political group, who then sold it to an extreme liberal group.

I get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of spam emails, every day, with the most batshit insane messages. It’s especially bad, now, with the US election coming up. The one saving grace, is that it wasn’t a right-wing group. They make the ultra-liberals look like a bunch of teetotalers.

Since she used the iCloud.com variant of the address, I simply nuke all emails that specify that, as a destination. Apple won’t let me block the domain, so I have to apply the rules, after they fill my inbox.

Sometime in there, one of the spammers figured out that icloud.com will also receive iMessage texts, so they have started coming to that, as well (so far, it is from legit political groups. I don’t expect that to last). I delete and report as junk. I very rarely respond with STOP.