State Needs To Hang Up On Robocalls

Elections are supposed to be the crowning glory of our democratic system of government, but few people we know would characterize the 2006 midterm Congressional elections as glorious. There is nothing glorious about mud, which at times seemed to be the chief product of this year’s campaign in Connecticut’s Second, Fourth, and Fifth Congressional Districts. But complain as we do about negative advertising, it will remain a staple of modern political life so long as it works. In most races both winners and losers employ the tactic, so unfortunately there will always be some proponents of smear and distortion with a record of success to sell.

This year, however, one particularly obnoxious component of negative advertising got out of hand. Most households in the state suffered a barrage of prerecorded automated political phone calls, commonly known as robocalls. Nearly all of them were designed to impugn the character of an opposing candidate.

These automated political calls are a relatively inexpensive and effective tool used by political marketers to manipulate the electorate. Ordinarily it would take 50 volunteers one hour to call 250 voters. In its promotional material, one national political marketing firm boasts that it can make 175,000 calls in one hour with many of its political messages clogging home answering machines. It is telephonic spam without filter or defense, and it reflects the new trend in high stakes politics to treat voters as a commodity to be sold by marketing firms to the highest bidder. No more person-to-person politicking. Simply cut a check to a marketing firm, and it will get out the vote anyway it can — no holds barred.

The calls, of course, are annoying, and it has been alleged in this election that some astute though ethically challenged marketers have posed as their opponents to harassed people with the calls simply to produce a backlash in the voting booth.

In 2001, state legislators did us all a great favor by creating a statewide Do Not Call list to prohibit commercial telemarketers from making unsolicited phone calls to people who do not wish to receive them. Of course, the politicians exempted themselves from the prohibition. With the recent proliferation of negative and abusive political robocalls, the time has come to take another look at the law. Other states have already outlawed them, with the sanction of the courts. Just last month the US Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to a North Dakota law banning robocalls unless a live operator first secures a telephone customer’s consent to receive the automated messages. That approach is both reasonable and fair.

Clearly, Connecticut needs a similar provision in its telephone solicitation law. We encourage everyone to raise the issue with state legislators whenever they run into them. Better yet, call them at 800-842-1902, 800-842-1423, 800-842-1420, or 860-240-8800. And let them know it is not a recording, but a real, live, irritated voter on the line.