As voters choose Congress, The Big Picture's 10-item Election Day reading list pairs congressional race analysis with WIRED and CBS News reports on misdirected fundraising texts and restitution affected by clemency.
All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and about one-third of the Senate are being contested, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says. USAGov says the results will determine which party controls Congress for the next two years.
WIRED reporter Dhruv Mehrotra said a collection of messages on his phone included 1,735 political fundraising texts from 812 numbers since March 2022. Most were intended for a relative. He counted 725 texts in 2026, including more than 190 in the first 20 days of October.
Mehrotra found that nearly half of the messages carried tracking codes that appeared to reference Sterling Data Company. CEO Martin Kurucz told WIRED that the company handles political texting and can make the same record available to multiple campaigns. Kurucz did not confirm that Sterling caused Mehrotra's number to be matched with a relative's donor profile. WIRED's account says people with mismatched numbers bear the burden of receiving unwanted messages.
EconoTimes previously reported on a West Virginia congressional campaign that used AI texts to summarize voter replies and assign alignment scores.
In another selection, CBS News reported that clemency orders signed by Trump since January 2025 erased at least $119 million in unpaid restitution. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) says a commutation can cancel outstanding federal criminal penalties, including restitution, which compensates victims for financial losses. The DOJ's public clemency list records individual grants but does not publish the aggregate figure reported by CBS News.
Other picks include Patrick Ruffini's analysis of polling error and early voting, a Washington Post profile of the Cook Political Report and its race ratings, and pieces on corporate ties to the Trump administration and possible congressional oversight. The federal Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to the CRS.
