%!@$#^& Campaign robo-calls!

[SeattleVet]

An open message to all of the candidates in this (and upcoming) election cycles:

Please, please, please! Stop filling up my answering machine with your long-winded prerecorded campaign calls. We can opt-out (and we have) from most of the rest of the telemarketing world, but these calls have been conveniently exempted from the Do-Not-Call list laws.

I'll make a deal with you (or whichever candidates you are placing the calls for). Stop leaving pre-recorded messages on my machine and I *might* actually consider voting for you. On the other hand, leaving a prerecorded message almost guarantees that you will NOT get my vote. I may not vote for your opponent, but I sure as heck won't be voting for you, either.

This is starting to get ridiculous... every day more calls extolling the virtues of a candidate who doesn't have the common courtesy to either use a live human being or to NOT leave a long, rambling prerecorded message when a machine has answered. Want my vote? Respect me enough to comply with the Do-Not-Call list, even though you have no legal obligation to do so.

[sneakythomas]

1. Bravo! I'm with you

I can't even remember who it was but about four years ago I called one guys office and told them that I wasn't voting for him based SOLELY on the fact that I was getting multiple prerecorded calls. I was told they couldn't do anything about it. I'm sure they were using an auto dialer, which just calls every possible number in the area.

I solved the problem (well actually two or three problems depending on how you count them) by canceling my land line and using my cell phone for everything.

[geniph]

2. Having run for office on a shoestring myself,

let me point out something. When you raise $12K and your opponent has $250K, your options for getting your message out to the voters are pretty limited. You can only doorbell so many houses by yourself; there are rarely volunteers for this much-loathed chore falling out of the trees. Campaign signs become visual white noise (plus they get knocked down, stolen, and removed by self-righteous protectors of the roadsides). Robo-calls cost about three cents per voter. It's by FAR the cheapest way to get your message out. Mailings cost anywhere from twenty-five cents to a dollar per voter, and are much more labor-intensive.

Cut the grassroots candidates a little bit of slack on this one, pretty please. I agree with you that a candidate like Dave Reichert, with money falling out his ass, doesn't need to use robo-calls, but what would you have the grassroots candidates do?

The most effective tactic for me (in terms of getting volunteers, votes, and dollars), was venues where I could actually sit and talk to people at some length. However, that's pretty limited by a couple of things; first, there are only so many people willing to host a candidate meet-&-greet; second, and far more important, the number of people willing to attend such an event is vanishingly small. I made full use of things like the video voter guide, the paper voter guide, what little media coverage I could get (the media pretty much dismisses any candidate who doesn't raise money in six figures or more), and public television, but very few people actually pay attention to those things.

So, not to be argumentative, but what would you have the essentially-unfunded candidates do to get their message to you, to even let you know they are running? It did not matter what method I used - doorbelling, robo-calling, literature drops, mailings, campaign signs - people bitched bloody murder about every single one of them. Do people simply want candidates to stop running altogether, and just appear on the ballot with only the information in the voter's pamphlet?

I think things were easier for everyone when all the campaigning was done from a soapbox on the streetcorner, and the candidates were all given an equal amount of time to speak, and equal publicity. The way campaigns are financed has completely ruined political campaigning; everything revolves around the almighty dollar.

[sneakythomas]

3. OK, but

when you get messages from people running unopposed it gets a bit old.

I like your idea of the soapbox. There was a time when people didn't "run" for office in the modern sense of the word, it was considered unseemly. Especially in the case of higher offices people knew your position based on history, they knew your character and/or reputation and voted accordingly.

[SeattleVet]

4. But when someone has clearly gone to the trouble of getting onto

the Do-Not-Call lists, they probably aren't going to be extremely receptive to listening to the message anyway. As soon as I hear one of the robo-calls that has left a message, my finger goes to the delete button, pausing only long enough to hear who is being pitched. The 'message' never really gets through.

I don't mind (as much) the robo-calls that start after I actually answer the phone; those are simple enough to just hang up on. The ones that really jerk my chain are the ones that leave their message on the answering machine. I have gone away for a few days only to have them fill the memory, so that nobody else was able to leave a *real* message. That's just flat wrong. I don't care who you are, or what your message is, DON'T leave it on my machine unless it's an actual human doing the talking who can keep is *short*. One of those long automated message left on the machine is purely an irritation.

I can sympathize with the relatively unknown, grass-roots candidate somewhat. But please don't leave long messages on answering machines. I don't know anyone who actually sits and listens to these all the way through, so the companies that are selling you this service, even at only $.03/voter, are basically ripping off the candidate, since they have to know going in to it that the actual number of people who will really hear the whole message is miniscule. It's probably more to your advantage to pay the extra for a method that will actually get the name and message to a larger percentage of voters.