Welcome to the ProRata podcast, a podcast that takes 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Filling in for Dan Primack, I'm Kim Hart. On today's show, the growing gender gap ahead of the midterms, and Apple CEO Tim Cook doubles down on the dark side of technology.

But first, we'll talk about how political campaigns across the country are increasingly using text messages to reach voters.

Sure, campaigns are still putting big bucks into ads on TV and social media, but they found that flooding voters' cell phones with personalized text messages is a pretty effective way of engaging with them. That's because most of us use text messages on a daily basis. And since they're sent directly to our mobile phones, which we nearly always have with us, they're really hard for us to

avoid. In fact, 90% of text messages are read within five minutes, and people are more likely

to click a link sent in a text message than in an email. But a lot of voters are pretty annoyed

that they're being inundated with political text messages that they didn't sign up for. Many have

wondered, how is this even legal? In fact, political campaigns are operating

in a gray area of the laws that restrict robocalls and robotext to mobile phones. How? Campaign staff

and volunteers are sending these text messages manually, one text message at a time, to individual voters.

So, since they aren't using auto-dialer equipment, they can skirt the robocall rules.

As a result, text messaging has become the breakout tool of this election cycle, and with the midterms

less than two weeks away, voters in states with tight races are getting dozens of these text

messages a day. In 15 seconds, we'll go deeper on this with Doreen Christensen, a columnist

with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. But first, this.

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And now, back to the pro rata podcast.

We're now joined by Doreen Christensen from the Sun Sentinel in South Florida, where voters are being inundated with text messages from political candidates on both sides.

So you've written a lot about how political candidates are using text messaging tools to engage with voters. How are everyday voters reacting to this? I imagine some feel that it's pretty invasive. Yeah, you know,

many of the voters that I talked to, we reported this story last weekend, my colleague and I,

...