Tripp Diaz wasn’t even watching the debate.
The bartender, who works in southeast Washington, D.C., was at home watching an episode of American Horror Story Monday night when the two presidential candidates were sparring on national television, she told local blog DCist. Diaz, who had already chosen which candidate to support, "was being a horrible citizen," she said.
But around 11 p.m., after the debate had concluded, she told DCist that she began receiving a deluge of texts and calls on her phone about the debate she had missed.
"I have no idea what happened," Diaz recalled to the outlet. The calls and texts kept mentioning Clinton and Trump, but Diaz told DCist she couldn’t figure out how or why people from across the country had decided to contact her.
Then a friend’s sister, she said, sent her a screenshot of a C-SPAN broadcast: At the bottom of the screen, the network had listed handles for Facebook and Twitter to gauge viewers’ reactions. Underneath those was a number to text. It was Diaz’s.
Diaz told DCist that she went to sleep with 7,900 texts still unread and that she had received another 4,500 when she woke up on Tuesday. Though she responded occasionally trying to correct the record — "This is not CSPAN. They scammed the world with my private number," she told one — some continued messaging her anyway.
"The Clinton ones were rather reasonable," Diaz said. "Their text messages were rather boring like 'I'm Jen from Florida and I support Hillary.’"
Trump supporters, she said, often sent messages by which she was "taken aback." Some included photoshopped pictures of Clinton; others used racial slurs and profanity. Diaz added she ignored most, though on some occasions responded with the hashtag #VoteTripp.
She also received more 400 calls, most of which she did not answer.
Diaz, who is registered to vote in swing state Virginia, cast the election as a choice "between two at the bottom of the barrel right now, but I’m obviously voting for Hillary."
CSPAN did not return a request for comment about the alleged mixup with Diaz’s number.
Diaz told DCist that she did not incur any additional charges from Verizon for the messages she received, but that they were still coming two days later.
"I’m probably just going to change my number," she told DCist.