I don’t know. I know that i don’t get much physical mail. But that might be because I’m not in a swing state. I do get a lot of begging letters for more money, but they all go to my “politics email folder”, where they didn’t bother me. And i assume they don’t cost the campaign a lot of money to send
Personally, i would avoid giving out a cellphone. I really don’t want to get spam texts.
I’m inundated with text messages from D candidates all over the country. Like 1 per hour all day every day. Different numbers with different pleas every time. Heck, I get so many texts from Obama himself that I’m sure by now he recognizes my number.
I would like a way to do two things: 1) Make a donation to my chosen party. 2) Have that be one and done where in exchange for my money they promise that absolutely positively nobody will ever attempt to contact me again via any means whatsoever. I know how to find then next year when I’m ready to contribute again. I don’t need their help.
I’ll be happy to do #1 if and only if they can do #2. If fully anonymous non-trivial donations were legal I’d do that too. But since they are not (for darn good reasons), they’ll have to do without my money. Any non-anonymous donation would simply explode the floodgates of more requests for money via any/every means imaginable. No thanks.
Unlike the OP I don’t care that they’ll spend much of my donation trying to solicit other donations from other people. That’s how marketing works. I just don’t want to be bothered.
Years ago my daughter lived with us for ?6 months. During her stay, my gf and I both talked with her about “politics” and as a result she votes and is excited about it.
However, she went to a political rally during her visit. She was upgrading her phone and it hadn’t yet arrived. I suggested she take my phone for emergency use.
Somehow, her (my) phone number and her (her) name made it into the party database. I get occasional texts, urging (my daughter) to vote/help out/etc. Thing is, she now lives in upstate NY.
I don’t get physical mail about any candidate. I was afraid I would. I usually don’t donate til after the convention. But this year I donated right after Biden decided to withdraw and Harris jumped in.
I do get texts soliciting on my phone number. But there is a way to type STOP as the bottom of these and it stops. That doesn’t mean another PAC won’t try.
You do this a few times and it reduces dramatically over about a week.
The Federal Election Commission needs to know who the donors of political contributions are unless it is less than $50. It’s the law. The primary purpose is in case of misuse of those funds by the candidate or campaign, then they can be returned to the donor.