^$(#&4&* ROBO-CALLS

[tpsbmam]

OMG, the Clinton campaign has started fucking robo-calling me!!! I called to demand to be taken off the list. "We'll do our best." Bite me! Whomever decided that robo-calls were a good idea needs to be tried and sentenced to a year of endless robo-calls.

This just happened to be Clinton -- I was inundated by both Dems AND Reps in 2006. I filed complaints (some of them didn't comply with the laws and they became absolutely harassing -- up to like 20 a day). These have to be fucking stopped!

Yo, Hillary, I'm not voting for you in the primary -- leave me the hell alone! And just in case.....Barack, I am voting for you in the primary so you can also leave me the hell alone.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Okay, rant over....you may now return to decimating each other and the opposing candidates.

[bhikkhu]

1. Just hang up. I would like to see a policy statement from both candidates to that effect

"Robocalls" are a worthless way of generating support for a candidate, and only marginally useful for spreading slime. False flag calls have also been used in prior elections, that is smear directed at one's own candidate to make the opponent look insanely vicious.

"Just hang up" is the best policy, and one the candidates should state publicly. It would be to their great credit.

[tpsbmam]

4. I actually don't hang up because

a) I want to hear what the candidates are saying...particularly Republican candidates.
and
b) I want to hear if they follow the law, which states that they have to identify who is doing the robo-calling at the beginning of the message and they have to give a phone number where the robo-caller can be contacted. I filed a complaint against the NRCC in 2006 because they violated both of these regulations. Of course, it went absolutely nowhere -- just got a lot of bullshit back about it being legal. (The Dems did actually later send them a cease and desist letter about this same issue.) I actually got into an argument with the FCC because they blew off my complaint with a bullshit robo-calls are allowed response when the NRCC was flagrantly violating the laws about robo-calling. It also got to the point where I considered it harassing -- I was at times getting 20 calls a day. I called our state attorney general also and lodged a complaint with his office. He's on the robo-calls warpath as I type -- must have gotten lots of complaints.

I'm not going to hang up and do nothing -- I'll keep fighting to have much tighter regulations placed on campaigns. They may have the right to "free speech" but they don't have the right to fucking harass me.

[sam sarrha]

2. hanging up only encourages hem

[Lobster Martini]

3. There is nothing more irritating than robocalls...

Crimeny, I like Ed Rendell, but if I get a robocall that starts with the words "Hi, this is Ed Rendell.." I drop the phone like it had spontaneously ignited...

[InsultComicDog]

5. Playing devil's advocate

if people get calls from Candidate A and as a result they vote for Candidate B... then wouldn't Candidate B benefit from making robocalls pretending to be from Candidate A? I'm not saying this is what is happening here - most likely it isn't - but it has happened before.

[tpsbmam]

6. I know it's happened before....

and those who make those calls are violating the law. That's why these calls need to be much more tightly regulated than they are. It HAS happened that people have gotten tons of calls claiming to be from candidate A when it was, in reality, a competitor trying to piss people off, often successfully. If these groups weren't allowed to make umpteen calls a day to the same person that might help. That's at least one regulation that needs to change -- one call per day per campaign -- that's it.