Regardless of the "manipulate public opinion" claim ... , Didn't Clinton win the populair vote?

That obviously doesn't work; how do you know which direction discourages voters? Most campaigns' whole marketing approach relies on texting voters 2000 times a day saying they're about to lose.

Did anyone else feel like the incessant texts from political spammers made you not want to vote the candidate spamming you? Having to block 5 new numbers every time I picked up my phone for the past month was really frustrating.

I didn’t get a single text.

I guess I’m doing something right. I hate spam texts.

Either your state didn't make the information available to anyone who claims to a political activist, or you managed to avoid having a phone number linked to your voter registration.

That's probably not accurate. A false sense of confidence is just as likely to discourage voters (eg: "I don't need to go vote, candidate ABC is already winning!") as anything else.

What’s your evidence for that claim?

I don't think there is some kind of grand conspiracy where nefarious groups are out to "get" everyone.

More likely, it's what you see with any data set that produces incorrect results: the wrong data in.