I’m delighted to report something that you’ve probably noticed unless you’ve been on Mars: The November midterm election is over. Full disclosure: I’m writing this in advance: I’m on my way to Mexico for Day of the Dead.
But the reason I can report that the election is over is because this column will run after it is. And the reason I’m so happy is that now I won’t be getting an endless series of text messages on my phone advocating everything from voting for Prop 780: The Right To Potato Salad Initiative to voting for a guy who thought that Del Taco products were actual “street tacos.” (This was real).
Now, most of us are annoyed by the Everest-sized piles of junk that arrives in our mailboxes before every election, right? OK, OK, all of us are annoyed. I just didn’t want the one person out there who likes it to call my editor and complain. He hates that.
But these are easily disposed of by the circular file approach. Although I do glance at them, because my attitude is the more fliers that go out opposing something, the more special interest money that’s being poured into it, so it’s something I paradoxically probably want to support.
Plus, they nearly always deceive, but in a particularly shady way that’s implying something without actually telling a falsehood.
“Stop your health insurance costs from going up!” one (fictional) ad might scream at you and you think, “Gee, I don’t want my health insurance costs to go up.” Then, you read the actual proposition, and it would make sure that hospitals have a safe minimum number of nurses on the ward at all times.
Many years ago, when I covered the city of Anaheim, I saw that a huge amount of money was being poured into a mayoral campaign for one candidate. I looked this up, and discovered the donor behind this largesse was actually an entity that owned casinos. At the time, there were strong, reasonably credible rumors that someone wanted to build a casino in Anaheim — a project that would obviously be greatly helped if the new mayor was behind it.
I even drove up to Bakersfield to take a look at the casino this entity owned there, and subsequently wrote a story about all the casino money flooding into this guy’s mayoral campaign. I called the candidate in question, and, as I expected, he vigorously denied being in favor of any casino in Anaheim. What a surprise.
So you can imagine my shock when I went to interview voters in Anaheim on Election Day, and one of them was clutching a flier favoring this candidate. “I don’t want casinos in Anaheim,” the voter told me, handing me the flyer.
I looked at it and my blood pressure went up 10,000 degrees. The flyer said something to the effect that the candidate was “The only candidate for mayor who has said publicly he opposes casino gambling In Anaheim.” Using a photo of his quote from my story.
I was furious because obviously in my mind this was utterly deceptive. But entirely legal. And true. I had been used and, since the ad came out just before the election, it was impossible to refute.
It’s been decades since that happened, but it can still infuriate me just to think about it.
Anyway, that’s not what I came here to complain about. It’s the freaking phone texts I’ve been getting every 9.2 nanoseconds. I have always jealously guarded my phone number to avoid exactly this kind of spam.
Whenever a bored-looking store clerk asks me for my phone number when she’s ringing something up, I always politely inform her that she doesn’t need my phone number just to pay for my new sweater and I’d rather not be in their store’s marketing system, thank you very much. I think they look bored on purpose so you don’t think when you answer.
It wasn’t until this 2026 election that I suddenly became inundated with unwanted texts and calls, so someone obviously harvested my number and sold it to 10.2 million spammers. I even pay extra to have spam block on my phone, but they still get through.
I’ll be in Mexico during the election and I already sent in my ballot by mail, so it’s not only stupid but too late. I want to hire a detective to find out the real cell phone numbers of the people who do this, and then sign them up for 1,000 organizations that will immediately start spamming them, preferably during dinner.
Meanwhile, I hope your candidate won, and feel free to spam me about this column. You can reach me at mfisher@scng.com.