Many people dislike constantly getting political emails, even from politicians with whom they agree. Democrats often complain about the begging tone used by politicians of their own party, especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It’s also frequently been noted that emails from former President Donald Trump’s operation often include such bogus concepts as the “Trump Donor Hall of Fame.”

Now, for Gmail users, Google is considering a plan to let political campaigns get around spam filters. 

According to Ars Technica, Google has asked the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) for “an advisory opinion on the potential launch of a pilot program that would allow political committees to bypass spam filters and instead deliver political emails to the primary inboxes of Gmail users.”

“Google requests the Commission’s opinion on a proposal to launch a pilot program for authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership political action committees that are registered with the Federal Election Commission during the 2022 election cycle (“Eligible Participants”) and that meet objective security criteria, such as implementation of technical authentication standards,” Google says in that filing. 

“Once an Eligible Participant is accepted into the pilot, as long as its emails do not contain content prohibited by Gmail’s terms of service such as phishing, malware, or illegal content and comply with program requirements, those emails will not be affected by forms of spam detection to which they would otherwise be subject. The placement of those emails into users’ inbox folders or spam folders will instead rely on direct feedback from each user.”

Ars Technica noted that since the commenting period started, most of the comments received so far by the FEC have been negative. 

“Regarding the below, absolutely not. Campaigns should produce content that is of value and high quality sufficient to not be sent to spam by filters, just like every other sender. If they can’t, they shouldn’t get special treatment,” one public comment said. 

“Hard pass, another comment said. “Please do not allow Google to open up Pandora’s Box on the people by allowing campaign/political emails to bypass spam filters. FEC should be strengthening regulations that protect Americans and our elections & not loosening the reigns. Campaign/political emails bypassing spam will make it a lot easier for bad actors to slip into people’s inboxes (people who never signed up for these mailing lists in the first place!) with highly emotionally charged messages trying to illicit [sic] a reaction to take advantage of voters (especially older Americans or less tech savvy individuals).”

Another comment raised another point: 

"Allowing all political emails to bypass spam filters is, among other things, a security risk. Imagine: A malicious actor could register to run for office and then it would guarantee that their emails were exempt from spam filters.”

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.