Best way to avoid political calls of all time, this is what happened last night...

[Soral]

About a month ago, a candidate running for congress kept calling our house line nightly...

Eventually my dad answered the phone and told them this....

"I have asked you to stop calling many times... If you call 1 more time, I PROMISE I will vote for your opponent"



Well... they stopped calling.............. until last night during dinner.



"Hello, I am calling on behalf of Dan Debicella for congress"

"I told your campaign that if you called one more time, I would vote for your opponent, and you just called"

"OH MY, WE ARE SO SORRY, Please don't do that, we promise to take you off the list right now! sorry sorry sorry"

"Too late"

"Please we are so sorry, please........"

CLICK

[pgodbold]

1. Excellent! Smart dad. nt

[gateley]

2. That's always my threat to our representatives, Dem or Rep, who are going to

vote against our interests. I say "although not a constituent, I am fully prepared to contribute heavily to your opponent in your next race..." I never make any other plea about doing what's right, etc., All they care about is the money. Don't know if it works, but that's my MO.

Good job! :thumbsup:

[emulatorloo]

3. Dunno. I had a women threaten to NEVER VOTE AGAIN yesterday when I was doing GOTV

It is bizarre to vote against your interests or not vote just because somebody screwed up and didn't mark you as "Do Not Call".

And it kinda bad to berate some volunteer who had nothing to do with the screw up.

[Soral]

4. understandable, but he told them repeatedly... if they can't handle a phone list..

[emulatorloo]

5. In this day of dirty tricks, it is hard to know for sure if it isnt' the opposition trying to trick

you,

This woman complained that she had received 20 calls that day. I don't think it is possible that Dem headquarters called her 20 times in one day. But maybe somebody claiming to be a Democrat called her 20 times.

At any rate I did mark her down as "Do Not Call" and apologized if Democrats were calling too often.

ON EDIT: there was a kind of weird thing yesterday. The Republican party called my spouse and said "Your absentee ballot was spoiled. You need to go to the poll and vote." My spouse has never been a Republican. She checked with the auditor and her ballot was just fine. Probably an honest mistake, It just makes me wonder . . . .

[Soral]

6. in today's world... people exaggerate quite a bit, she probably got 1 call and was just in a bad moo

[emulatorloo]

7. That's why I tried to be extra-nice. At any rate, all the calls with be over on Nov 3rd.

[TuxedoKat]

8. I wouldn't put it past them

to try and trick people into committing voter fraud somehow by doing something like this...

[emulatorloo]

14. It could have been an honest mistake. But yeah, you wonder . . .

[Thav]

9. Nice!

I had the rethuglicans call my house and asked this:

"Can we count on your vote on Tuesday?"

to which I answered:

"I am going to vote on Tuesday."

And I did vote today, I filled in the "Democratic Party" bubble and flipped the ballot over.

The caller never picked up that I didn't say I was going to vote rethuglican. Amusing.

[K8-EEE]

10. UM, some of us are MAKING political calls!

I did have somebody tell me that, LOL!

[emulatorloo]

16. Most people I called were HAPPY to talk to me. They are excited about voting, and excited to tell

somebody about how excited they are.

But yeah, I did get a couple cranks too. LOL.

[BeFree]

11. Good one

What I do is use the caller ID and try to call them back.

Guess what? All their numbers are no longer in service!

We should outlaw calls that come from numbers you can't call back.

It is a form of harrassment to get calls from numbers that are not real.

[Soral]

12. Or say "I can't talk now... can I call you at home later?"

[sybylla]

13. What people don't realize is that there are as many as a dozen organizations making calls

Labor
Party organizations
Candidate committees
Legislative organizations (DSCC, RGA, etc)
Move On & the like
Conservation Organizations
Pro choice organzations
and any number of 3rd party shadow and not so shadowy groups for whom it is illegal to coordinate with a candidate or a party on any election

So you can get your name taken off one of the orgs lists, but that doesn't take it off of any of the others.

It's an interesting response, and if it works, great.

But it's pretty short sighted to expect it will.

[emulatorloo]

15. at any rate, all the calls will be over tomorrow.

[jobycom]

17. Cute, but they hear that all the time, and the calls probably aren't even connected

It's kind of like telling a McDonald's manager that if you ever get another mistaken order from any other McDonald's you'll go to Wendy's. That manager doesn't have any connection to the other stores, and even if he did he couldn't change the whole business model to accomadate your needs.

These calls are made from several sources. Some are professional services who are contracted by handlers hired by the campaigns, some are campaign volunteers, some are local or even state volunteers from their call centers. Even if you get off one list, you'll be on several others.

Comments like your dads do have some impact, in quantity. It's like when you write or fax your opinion to your Congresscritter. They don't read them, they divide them into large baskets and decide which basket is heaviest. So if they start getting enough complaints, they might scale back. On the other hand, if it's a professional service they don't really care, because they get paid either way.