Have you received a text message from a politician yet?

In addition to phone calls and mailers, voters across Wichita and the 4th Congressional District have been receiving text messages from a candidate in the past couple of weeks. Party leaders say text messaging will be an increasingly important tool to help campaigns get out the vote.

The messages – sent from Democrat James Thompson’s campaign – are personalized by volunteers and include some of the grammatical conventions of texting, such as all caps and asterisks to signal important information.

“Hi (voter’s first name), I’m Behnosh, a volunteer with the James Thompson campaign,” read one message Tuesday. “Sorry if we are texting you again, but we have *BIG NEWS*.” Early voting in Sedgwick County now has extra locations and includes Saturday hours **this weekend only**.”

He has yet to see data on the effectiveness of text messages, but Kelly Arnold, the chairman of the Republican Party in Kansas, said the technology is a new frontier for campaigns. Many people get annoyed with robocalls, he said, so text messages could be a less intrusive way to reach people on their cellphones.

“It’s something we’re looking at as a tool to use in our toolbox,” Arnold said.

Republican Ron Estes’ “campaign is using new tools, like social media and text messaging, along with more traditional media, phone banks and door-to-door canvassing,” campaign spokesman Rodger Woods said in a statement.

The Thompson campaign is using text messages just like other forms of contact, said Marcus Williamson, a senior strategist for the campaign. It isn’t using texts for specific messages or targeting them at particular times when texting might be more effective than a phone call or home visit.

Campaign text messages have popped up sporadically in the past two elections, Williamson said, and will likely increase in the 2018 campaign.

“What we find with any form of contact is different people respond differently to different methods,” Williamson said. “Some people like social media, some people like phone calls, some people like mail pieces. It’s just another avenue to reach out and connect with people.”

The Thompson campaign gathers the phone numbers just as it would numbers for phone banking, such as through voting records or when people register on the campaign’s website, Williamson said.

Volunteers use their own phones to send the text messages through an application. The app sends the text message from a campaign phone number, so the number that appears on a voter’s phone is not the volunteer’s personal number.

“Hi (Name) I’m Ashley, and I’m a volunteer with the James Thompson for Congress campaign,” read one recent message. “I am texting to make sure you received your absentee ballot if you asked for one. Did you get your ballot ok?”

When voters respond, they get a personalized text back from that same person. “Great! I am so glad you received that mail-in absentee ballot. Do you have any questions that I can answer about James or the ballot before you send in? Remember: Mail-in ballots must be received no later than Election Day, April 11.”

Williamson said he hadn’t heard complaints about the text messages. But there isn’t any policy yet on how many texts a voter might receive, he said. Right now the campaign is limited by how many volunteers it has and how voters respond to them.

This story was originally published April 5, 2017 at 9:44 AM with the headline "Have you received a text message from a politician yet?."