robocalls

In case anyone’s missed it, I hate robocalls. They’re a plague on the election process, and I’ve vowed to not vote for any candidate who robo-calls me.

I’m not alone in detesting robocalls. It seems that Senators Feinstein and Specter have a bill in the Senate which would seriously curtail such shenanigans if it became law. ABC’s Blotter has a post on the subject, which includes the following reaction from a robocaller:

“[I]t’s bad for democracy,” one Democratic consultant told Politics magazine recently. His company is a member of the American Association of Political Consultants, which is pushing to stop the Feinstein-Specter bill, and defend “our clients’ First Amendment right to communicate with voters.”

So, would it be wrong for me to point out that the folks opposing robocalling aren’t necessarily opposed to stopping all forms of calls? I certainly don’t want to infringe upon candidates’ abilities to reach out to potential voters.

However, is it so much to ask that if they choose to do so by phone, they could at least extend the courtesy of putting a human on their end of the line to talk to me?

Those of you who “love” telemarketers and political robocalls as much as I will likely appreciate the hypocrisy portrayed in Wednesday’s User Friendly.

In an earlier post, I made a snide remark about the expectation of Romney spending a lot of his own money in his battle with the McCain-Huckabee show (at least it sounds like Huck would be Veep if McCain gets the nod).

Perhaps McCain isn’t quite so squeaky clean on the ethical campaign front. From CNN’s Political Ticker:

The day before polls close in Tuesday’s critical Florida primary, some voters in the Miami area received automated phone calls in Spanish falsely accusing Mitt Romney of supporting an opening of relations with Cuban President Fidel Castro.

A key member of Romney’s Latin American policy team, Ambassador Roger Noriega, had been on local radio on Monday morning talking about Romney’s anti-Castro stance. “It was obviously a dirty tactic and strategy to rebut the efforts we made to let the [Hispanic] community know our position,” said Al Cardenas, Romney’s Florida state chairman.

Asked if he suspected rival John McCain, Cardenas responded, “Obviously it’s a camp of one of our opponents,” later adding “I can’t specifically state with certainty it is John McCain’s campaign, all I know is there are two campaigns making these calls, ours and his and these calls started immediately after our programming on that issue.”

Seen in PowerLine, the text of a robo-call in Michigan:

Hi. This Senator Joe Lieberman. I’m calling for John McCain.

As you may remember I was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. But this year I’m supporting Republican John McCain for President because he is the person best qualified to lead our country forward. He’s a straight talker who will always do what’s right for our country regardless of partisan politics and he’s the only candidate prepared to be commander-in-chief from day one.

There isn’t a competitive Democratic primary in Michigan this year and all registered voters are able to participate in a Republican primary. So I’m calling today to urge you to vote in the Republican primary on January 15 for Senator John McCain. He’ll break through the partisanship and make our government in Washington work for all the people again.

So, a little bit of Jomentum added to the campaign, yes?

I’ll remind politicians of my promise to vote against any candidate who robo-calls me. Politicians are welcome to make a sales pitch to me over the phone, but only if there’s a real, live human on the other end of the line.

The surest way to get me to vote for your opponent is for you to robocall me.  (Setting aside some campaigns’ dirty tricks of making it seem that their opponents are making robocalls.)

I am not alone in holding such a view, judging by a quote in WaPo’s “The Trail” blog:

Ray Rich, 57, an artist and Republican from Hillsboro, said Friday at the Mike Huckabee event in Henniker that he liked Romney’s stance on Social Security. But today Rich turned against Romney.

“I voted for John McCain because I thought he had the best chance of beating Romney. I received countless [pre-recorded] phone calls from the Romney campaign, and the feeling I got from them was a very cold feeling. They were extremely negative, slamming other candidates. I was just so put off by that that I attempted to strategically vote to block him.”

It’s a shame that these sleazy tricks are still legal. From Threat Level:

Marcel Kielkucki of Manchester, Iowa, writes in to say that this morning he got an anti-Huckabee robo-call with no disclaimer.

The focus, Kielkucki said, was three-fold. There were shots at Huckabee’s taking gifts from people with ties to Bill Clinton, a mention of Huckabee claiming he has a theology degree, and a reference to the pardons and commutations he issued as governor. …

Another report in The New York Post last week said that a Democrat in Iowa and likely caucus-goer received an anti-Hilllary Clinton and Barack Obama call that then touted John Edwards.

Meanwhile, Edwards and Obama received such treatment in a phone call to an Iowan household that supports Edwards, according to an anonymous blogger at the Bleeding Heartland progressive community blog.[...]

If there were any aspect of the campaign cycle that needed reform, it’s the apparent legality of such dirty tricks.

A word of wisdom to candidates or local political organizations that are seeking my vote:

Robo-calling my house is a lousy way to convince me to vote for you.

Robo-calling my cell phone is a great way to convince me to vote against you.

If you want to campaign in my general direction, at least do me the courtesy of putting a human on the other end of the line.

Thank-you.