Your voter-trolling autodialer is illegal: The cringey moment the FCC spanks a congresscritter FCC chairman Tom Wheeler caught the members of the US House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology off guard Tuesday when he told them that one of their favorite campaign tools is against the law to use. Speaking alongside FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, Wheeler testified before the Congressional subcommittee on issues …
These calls are pretty much useless to convince undecided people to vote for a candidate anyway, since no one wants to listen to a long (generally either boring or insultingly overhyped) prerecorded message that starts at some random time they did not plan for it.
It might be a little useful as a way to call the people who are registered for a party to remind them to vote, since they are more likely than not to vote with their party than an opposition candidate.
>These calls are pretty much useless to convince undecided people to vote for a candidate anyway,
Perhaps but they sure helped W Bush win the nomination in 2000 when a push poll robo blast (more than likely Karl Rove's handiwork) in South Carolina asked voters if they believed McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock (ie his adopted daughter from Bangladesh). They are great for slander.
What are these merits and competencies of which you speak? We've got teevee, friction-free bleached smiles, adorable children (or pets or spouses), and perfect hair -- why confuse voters with qualifications, issues, and stuff they don't understand anyway?
This post has been deleted by its author
Interesting. I thought the same way you do, but Wheeler pointed out that it does apply to them also. I knew the "Do Not Call" list didn't apply to politicos, charities, and couple of others.
Personally, getting a robocalll from a politician might just make me vote for his/her opponent. I'm cranky that way.
So.. since no robocalls applies to politicos... when will the lawsuits start?
Alexander Cockburn wrote in The Nation many years ago (you can tell how many by the example) the following [paraphrased]:
The difference between Republicans and Democrats is, if a Contra were raping a nun, the Republican would say, "Go for it!" and the Democrat would say, "Now, you know that's not right. Ask her nicely and if she says 'no,' I'll help you."
While I can't say I disagree with any of the furious politico-bashing above, it might be worth pointing out that the "tele-town-halls" explicitly referred to by Walden and Wheeler are not quite the same thing as the incessant robo-dialling we suffered last May.
For those of you lucky enough to have avoided working with/for US corporations, a "town-hall" is a large, company-wide meeting in which all the plebs can, in theory, talk to, listen to and query senior management. In the political sphere, the "town-hall" is the loose equivalent of a constituency workshop. Because some of the US constituencies are pretty massive and the constituents widely spread, politicians of all stripes have taken to having "tele-town-halls" - massive conference calls, effectively, so that people from many different towns can participate without having to drive for several hours to get to the meeting in person.
What the FCC is banning here (or rather, what they are saying is already banned) is not repeated "have you considered voting for the Cornish Independence Party" calls, but rather mass telephone invitations to a conference call. Still annoying of course, and, if done without the constituents' consent, illegal (as Wheeler points out). However, they're primarily tools for a representative to receive instructions from and relay information to their constituents, and while there should probably be some method of testing consent before spam-calling a hundred-thousand people, it's hard to think of one that wouldn't result in a massive fall in the numbers of people participating in these events (how many people, even if they were genuinely interested, would really bother returning a letter, for example?).
It's probably also worth noting that these aren't particularly frequent events - maybe once a month or so (YMMV). What's bad about them (IMO) is not that the calls are made - I think the town halls are quite a useful tool for both politicians and constituents - but that there's no way of opting out (or in) of them.
TL;DR: "Tele-town-halls" are not quite as evil as have been made out, and are not quite the same thing as automated begging calls. That doesn't mean they should be legal, but El Reg seems to have taken away something that wasn't really said by either party in the reported exchange.
So, these robo-callers are systems that automatically dial a number, then play a recorded message saying "have you considered voting for the Cornish Independence Party?", like the recorded calls I get from Disney Holidays? Not systems where a human being clicks on "next elector" and the system automatically dials a number, then the human being says "have you considered voting for the Cornish Independence Party?" which is what UK pols do. Of couse, claiming they don't need to abide by the Telephone Preference Scheme opt-out as they aren't selling anything, they're "gathering information".
"Of couse, claiming they don't need to abide by the Telephone Preference Scheme opt-out as they aren't selling anything, "
I make a point of being as offensive as I can possibly be to such callers.
They're breaking the law. It might be the only job they can get but that's the same argument that pickpocketing teams tend to use too.
"Of course, claiming they don't need to abide by the Telephone Preference Scheme opt-out as they aren't selling anything,"
My answer tends to be along the lines of:
So you know full well that I have stated that I do not want these calls, and you have decided on my behalf that I want you to use this get-out to call me anyway.
Do you seriously expect me to vote for someone who does that?
The Congressman clearly never learned the old lawyer adage: never ask a question in public to which you don't know the answer.
And I prefer my Congressmen to limit themselves to "Wow, that's interesting" since the alternative is a slow speech with pauses ever three to five words used primarily to use up three minutes of public mike time. I can't be the only one to wish someone would yell "for f*cks sake get on with it" when one of these assclowns takes the stage for yet another three minutes of painfully slow outrage.
I got an unsolicited call from a "human" at the republican party, and they asked me what was the most pressing issue that I thought was facing Uhh-merica.
When I told him "STOP UNSOLICITED JUNK CALLS, LIKE THE ONE YOU ARE MAKING TO ME RIGHT NOW" he had to pause to write it down, and then another pause to try to come up with a reply. He attempted to tell me that he was doing nothing wrong.
I challenged him - if you can't find a way to stop these calls then how can I believe that your political party is capable of fixing the economy or bringing world peace?
"Personally, getting a robocalll from a politician might just make me vote for his/her opponent. I'm cranky that way."
How many of these calls are deliberately annoying calls purporting to come from a different party from the originator?
Is Donald Trump actually a long sleeper Democrat mole, intended to discredit capitalism and then stand for the White House?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
