Campaign volunteers have always faced certain hazards when they go out and engage in democracy. For phone bankers, there are hang-ups; for canvassers, a door slammed in the face.

But as more campaigns turn to peer-to-peer texting as an efficient and effective form of contacting voters, a new danger has arisen: unsolicited dick pics.

“It was disgusting,” recalled John, a volunteer on a recent California primary campaign, of the photograph of a penis that he received in response to a message about getting out to vote. “He had a rash and it looked all sorts of abnormal. There must have been four or five of us crowding around the computer in genuine concern.”

After years of knocking on doors and making phone calls for campaigns, this primary season was the first time John, who did not want to be identified by his full name, was asked to send text messages on behalf of a candidate. Peer-to peer texting has exploded as a campaign tool since Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign employed it in 2016. The tactic crossed the Atlantic in 2017 as Sanders campaign veterans jumped on the Jeremy Corbyn bandwagon.

“This technology is revolutionizing political organizing in a very short period of time,” said Daniel Souweine, the chief executive and founder of Relay, the texting program John used. “The reason campaigns are using it so much is that it works so well.”

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Souweine was a digital campaign staffer on the Sanders campaign, primarily focusing on emails, when his boss presented him with a challenge: could he send text messages to 100,000 Bernie supporters in the states bordering Iowa? Souweine put together a team of volunteers and made it happen, and was shocked that 5% of recipients responded positively.

“This was a very high-bar ask,” Souweine recalled. “We’re not just asking you to knock doors. We’re asking you to drive to another state to knock doors … That was the ‘Eureka’ moment.”

With programs like Hustle, Relay or CallHub, campaigns can now send out thousands of text messages in the time it might take a phone banker to reach a single voter, but the process is not automatic. To stay on the right side of US law, each text must be sent individually – though the programs make that process as quick as a mouse click.

In the best-case scenario, that means an interested voter can text back and engage in a conversation with an actual human. But things can go awry in both directions.

When Ana Little-Saña, a rising college sophomore at George Washington, responded to a campaign text that she was voting for a different candidate, the person on the other side shot back: “Fuck that fagg.”

Ana Little-Saña (@ana_littlesana) Hey @antonio4ca



Maybe you should train your vols/interns/staff to not call other candidates by offensive slurs during your voter outreach. Just a thought. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/8A20aMeilY

Little-Saña is a campaign veteran herself, having started volunteering at age 15, so she wasn’t particularly fazed. But she shared the messages on social media because she said she wanted the campaign to take accountability for its volunteers.

“It’s interesting to me that campaign volunteers are being socialized to text,” she said. “I wonder if it’s almost too easy to volunteer,” she added, noting that the challenge of speaking to strangers on the phone or in person used to impose a self-selection filter on volunteers.

Souweine noted that, after receiving feedback from clients, Relay recently introduced an interstitial over incoming images, hiding them unless and until a user decides to click on them.

“Yes, there are dick pics. Yes, there are people saying, ‘I don’t want this, take me off your list,’” said Souweine. “There are also literally millions of valuable interactions.”

Souweine also argued that for some volunteers, getting a negative response “just kind of strengthens their resolve”.

Indeed, John decided to try to turn his dick pic into political lemonade.

“I responded to say, ‘You might want to get that checked out,’” he recalled. “And then I copied and pasted our position on universal healthcare.”