Ban the robo-calls
Jonathan Singer at MyDD thinks Democrats should consider banning robo-calls. He's referring to a CQ Weekly article for which, sadly, there is no link, but it discusses the fact that a lot of states (but not Washington to my knowledge) are considering some form of legislation. From MyDD:
I suppose back when I was a campaign worker, if robo-calls had been prevalent, I might have been one of those people worrying about whether we should ban a campaign tool that is so cheap.
People can argue endlessly about their effectiveness, but at the end of the day, robo-calls are an insult to regular voters, even if they present relatively above-board messages. One thing politicians and campaign operatives need to do is stop putting their wishes ahead of the people's.
If all robo-calls are banned, then nobody gets an advantage one way or the other. I would, however, stop short of making the use of robo-calls a "third strike," although maybe in the case of the BIAW we could make an exception...
Side with the regular people, Democrats. Ban robo-calls. It would be a nice bill for an incoming freshman. Good press and the eternal gratitude of most voters sounds like a good thing to me.
And to be clear, we're not talking about school, emergency or employer-related systems used to convey useful information. We're talking about political calls.
Not only are these states right in moving against these bad faith practices, the new Democratic Congress should seriously think about regulating robo-calls as well, whether outlawing the use of them in altogether or for those on teh do-not-call registry or alternatively placing strict requirements for those financing the calls to clearly identify themselves and who they are supporting at the beginning of the calls.While there are plenty of more important issues to move forward, whether in Congress or in the Legislature, it would be good for Democrats to put themselves on the side of regular people, who hate automated calls.
But even aside from this, it's not clear to me that robo-calls -- the more up front kind (rather than the more duplicitous variety) -- are as effective as many believe. It is true that they are extremely cheap and thus allow for a high volume of voter contacts without a large investment. At the same time, they irritate a lot of voters.
In my personal campaign experience, I would probably opt not to spend money on robo-calls in the future even in the absence of new legislation prohibiting or limiting their use (boy, did I enjoy the calls I received on my cell phone from voters wholly opposed to prerecorded phone messages!).
I suppose back when I was a campaign worker, if robo-calls had been prevalent, I might have been one of those people worrying about whether we should ban a campaign tool that is so cheap.
People can argue endlessly about their effectiveness, but at the end of the day, robo-calls are an insult to regular voters, even if they present relatively above-board messages. One thing politicians and campaign operatives need to do is stop putting their wishes ahead of the people's.
If all robo-calls are banned, then nobody gets an advantage one way or the other. I would, however, stop short of making the use of robo-calls a "third strike," although maybe in the case of the BIAW we could make an exception...
Side with the regular people, Democrats. Ban robo-calls. It would be a nice bill for an incoming freshman. Good press and the eternal gratitude of most voters sounds like a good thing to me.
And to be clear, we're not talking about school, emergency or employer-related systems used to convey useful information. We're talking about political calls.
