If your phone has been buzzing with increasingly frantic campaign texts, The Verge has an explainer on why. The publication's policy desk examined the flood of political fundraising messages hitting Americans' phones ahead of the midterm elections.

The piece opens with real examples of the genre's escalating desperation: a message in the voice of Texas candidate James Talarico begging recipients to 'rush in even just $1,' a rival text branding his supporters 'Marxists,' and breathless all-caps dispatches invoking Mark Kelly.

The analysis gets at why the texts are so persistent and so difficult to stop — a mix of campaign-finance incentives, cheap bulk-messaging infrastructure, and loose rules around political communication that don't apply the same brakes as commercial spam. With the midterms approaching, the volume is only trending in one direction, making the piece a timely look at one of election season's most universally loathed experiences.