Political group texting is different from mass texting and from the frequent, and often bothersome, texts that so many of us receive from candidates soliciting campaign contributions. Group texting typically is initiated by a civic-minded individual reaching out to selected recipients simultaneously. Recipients can respond and everyone can see each other's responses in real time. Text groups can be large or small, but I believe they work best when they are comprised of individuals who share common values.
My Atlanta-based text group of a couple dozen individuals has no name, leader or organizational structure. It is independent from political parties. The closed group is mainly a bunch of ordinary citizens, although it includes an incumbent state senator, a former mayor, a former city council member (myself), a former newspaper publisher and activists seasoned from fights over road projects that threatened to tear their historical neighborhoods asunder. Group members also come from different walks of life and faiths: Christianity, Islam, Judaism and humanism. This is worth noting because we read and hear so much about a world rife with religious and ethnic conflict. It is sobering to observe residents working together for common causes — united by a text-message thread.
My no-name group, without prompting, tracks and monitors voter suppression and other anti-democratic activities on the part of local and state officials. Punching above its weight, it has been extremely successful accomplishing what it set out to do: to inform and motivate neighbors to fight for progressive causes like common-sense gun laws and abortion rights. When President Joe Biden came to Atlanta before he dropped out of the race, some of the group’s members worked their way to the front of his rally, making sure he saw their green and white signs that read “Regulate Guns NOT Women.” Biden noticed, accepted a button from them and read their slogan out loud to enthusiastic applause.
Group texts arrive at all hours of the day and night, sometimes annoyingly so. But there is something about this conversation that binds us together as a group and inspires our loyalty to one another and the causes we undertake. After participating in this group for the better part of a year, I‘ve become aware of just how utilitarian it is and how much it represents a pure form of political participation.
The group has been among the first to spread news about events and issues that later became known nationally. For example, I first found out from my fellow texters about a rogue group of three Republican members of Georgia’s State Election Board who were conjuring up schemes to interfere with certification of November’s election results, including by forcing local election boards to hand-count all votes. Immediately upon hearing what the elections board was up to, our group organized a mass mobilization of the opposition, using the text thread among other means. “They were shocked when 859 of us showed up,” one texter exclaimed. A Superior Court judge recently struck down the last-minute policy changes.
The group also was among the first to discover that the office of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had launched, with little if any citizen input, a flawed voter cancellation request portal. The website, by exposing confidential voter information, could have allowed anyone to fraudulently cancel other voters’ registrations. The attention our group and others devoted to this potential problem led to reforms that in the end better protected voters.
There is always someone in our texting group who can answer almost any question. When I reviewed my sample ballot for early voting, I had questions about the three proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot. One of them dealt with a statewide homestead tax exemption, another with the creation of a state tax court and the third with raising the tangible personal property tax exemption. The members on the text thread were suspicious of all three and began posting opinions about potential problems — mainly claiming that they would take taxing authority away from local governments. I voted no on all three, but given how the amendments were worded I’m not sure I would have voted that way were it not for the insights I received from my fellow texters.
One can imagine how powerful it would be if a nucleus of political group texters sprouted in neighborhoods throughout the nation. I am sure that many public officials would consider those groups a threat to their power, but by shining a light on political shenanigans, blowing the whistle on unscrupulous public officials, and educating and informing the public about how democracy is supposed to work, I believe those groups would be engaging in the highest — and purest — form of public service.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
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