Florida Puts a Stop to Anonymous Political Text Messages

The Florida Election Commission’s new rules seek to improve transparency for voters and tackle the spread of misinformation.

With mid-term elections in November of this year, you may receive text messages promoting different candidates, but they can no longer be anonymous.

The Florida Election Commission’s new rules seek to improve transparency for voters and tackle the spread of misinformation.

Now, political texts should explicitly state who paid for them. Groups that break the new regulation will be fined from $200 to $250 for each text.

Even though the practice of sending text messages as part of a political campaign began almost a decade ago, it has become more popular during the pandemic. In most cases, voters didn’t sign up to receive these texts. 

Technology allows campaigns to send thousands of personalized messages at a time through apps and programs, making it appear as though they come from individual phones. Federal rules already prohibit campaigns from using auto-dialing technology.

The Florida Election Commission is accepting comments from the public on the new rules until Thursday of next week. It determined it had the authority to change the policy without asking for approval from the Legislature.