Campaigners See Relational Organizing as Workaround for iOS 26

Campaigners and political consultants are taking a new look at a battle-tested tactic as Apple prepares to launch new spam filters for the country’s tens of millions of iPhone users: Relational organizing.

The coming release of iOS 26 – the newest update to the software that powers iPhones – is set to introduce new spam filters for texts that will place messages from numbers that are not in a users’ contacts to a separate folder for unknown senders. That means that millions of political texts – from GOTV reminders to fundraising pleas – could go unnoticed by users who don’t regularly check their unknown senders folder.

That’s created a headache for campaigns, committees and consultants, who are scrambling to figure out how to get their messages around the filters and in front of voters’ eyeballs.

One potential workaround, according to voter outreach pros, may be relational organizing – a practice pioneered in recent years that essentially boils down to mobilizing volunteers to text or call people in their personal networks in support of a candidate, cause or organization.