By admin 
Candidates and political parties have several ways of reaching out to voters ahead of an election to try to gain their support or encourage them to head to the polls including sending mailers, knocking on doors and phone calls.
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But a text message on the phone from a number not programmed into a person’s contacts might be one of the biggest annoyances.
In an election where most people have already made up their minds, some may just want to stop text messages that campaigns send.
So here’s one way to get some escape from political bombardment on your phone.
Vote early.
South Carolina has two weeks of early voting ahead of the Nov. 3 election. The last day to vote early is Oct. 31.
Polling places are open 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturdays. To find an early voting location, visit scvotes.gov.
Through the third day of early voting, more than 280,000 voters in South Carolina had made up their mind and cast a ballot early for the Nov. 3 election, according to the state election commission.
Both major parties receive lists of people who have early. Those lists are provided to the parties four times, the state election commission said. The first list was provided Thursday, Oct. 22. The next updates are set for Oct. 26, Oct. 29 and Nov. 2.
Parties compare those lists to those who they believe will vote for their candidates and remove those who have already voted.
“We scrub anyone who’s voted, pull them off of our list,” Parmley said. “The practical reason is it saves us money. I’m not gonna keep calling people and texting them … We don’t want to waste somebody’s time on calling somebody who’s already voting.”
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And the mailers that go through the postal service may not stop. Much of that is already planned and moving through the system, Parmley said.
“We’re trying to talk to people that we believe are for us, and that’s what we’re doing in the last week or two,” Parmley said.
Parties can share the information with their candidates as well to let them know who doesn’t need to be contacted anymore.
SC GOP Chairman Drew McKissick said targeted digital ads may stop showing up in a person’s online feed if they vote early.
“We will then subtract everybody off of our targeted list who’s already voted, so we won’t have to spend money on text. We won’t spend any more money on another mail piece to them. We won’t spend more money on phone calls to them,” McKissick said.
McKissick jokingly added that the money saved would go into messaging to those who have not cast a ballot yet.
“That’s more money we can funnel and bug the heck out of the people who hadn’t voted yet, which will start getting a text from me that will say, ‘I’ll leave you alone if you’ll go vote today,’” he said with a laugh.
Unfortunately, you still may see the campaign ads on television no matter if you voted early or not.