Automated campaign phone calls aren’t new. But this past election, the national Republican Party flooded residents in several dozen districts with repeated phone calls, the New York Times reported. Some residents received five calls a day, every day, for a week — all with the same automated, negative message about the Democratic candidate in that district. A few calls were made in the early morning or middle of the night, and some voters received several calls minutes apart, the Times reported. Democratic officials have protested, saying that the calls were tantamount to harassment and were aimed at discouraging people from voting.
One solution: New Hampshire has a law that prohibits automated campaign calls to people on the no-call list (though the GOP still called them but agreed to stop after being contacted by the state’s attorney general).
The GOP also employed a new automated telemarketing ploy that is akin to a push poll. The call asks a question, such as whether you believe that judges who “push homosexual marriage and create new rights like abortion and sodomy” should be controlled, the Times reported. If your answer is “yes,” the automated message then says that you shouldn’t vote for the Democratic candidate.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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