Some Orlando-area voters call political 'robocalls' just another form of telemarketing

The phone rings, and Charles Bender, 86, rushes to answer it, only to get a recorded voice making the political pitch of the day.

It's an advocate for Amendment 2. Or someone slinging mud about the presidential candidates.

Bender's, son, Bobby, wishes he could block the calls.

"They constantly call, so by the time I come home from work, my father is all rattled," the Boynton Beach man said. "It's so out of control."

"Robocalls," or pre-recorded campaign calls, have become so pervasive that they outnumbered mailers, personal calls and door-to-door canvassing as the leading voter-outreach method during the primary season, according to a study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The hotly contested presidential race and scores of local campaigns mean that thousands of phones will be ringing through the weekend.

Robocalls made their debut in the late 1990s and have proliferated recently because they're cheap -- four phone calls for a penny. That makes it easy for candidates, especially local contenders lacking a big war chest or a cadre of volunteers, to reach thousands of voters.

"Politics is being outsourced to these computerized phone systems," said Shaun Dakin, who has founded a nonprofit group trying to control the robocalls.

The calls are exempt from the federal Do Not Call registry because of First Amendment protections. Only a few states have banned them, including Indiana, where the state Supreme Court will decide whether such a ban is constitutional.

Most people, however, fail to see much difference between a telemarketer and the robocalls, Dakin said. Rather than banning the calls, Dakin said there should be a way for people to opt out of the political calls, such as through a registry.

His organization has set up such a database, which has 85,000 members. Though the registry has no legal authority, it's available to political parties and candidates who pledge not to use robocalls, Dakin said. Hank Nolin of Port Orange would welcome the relief from political calls.

"I'm an independent, so they're all courting me," Nolin said. "I find them offensive, getting a robotic call rather than a person.

"I think voters should have the chance to opt out, if they want."

Roger Austin, who has worked on campaigns for 20 years, said the calls are a tool that can work well on the local level.

"The way you get the most voters is a portfolio of methods, and done right, robocalls absolutely work," he said. Last year, he set up a robocall for the campaign of state Rep. Charles McBurney, R-Jacksonville, that was well-received.

Some research suggests the calls aren't effective. One study by Donald Green, director of Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies, found that more direct communication methods, such as door-to-door canvassing, worked better at reaching voters than automated calls.

Backlash has been growing against the automated calls, which some voters find intrusive and annoying.

Michael Dimmock, associate director with the Pew Center, said voter surveys after the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary found that most people hung up before the message could finish.

"Of the people who got robocalls, about 8 percent of them not only found them annoying but were angry," Dimmock said. "Eight percent is nothing to scoff at in a close campaign."

A few voters protested the robocalls during the primary contest between former State Attorney John Tanner and attorney R.J. Larizza, who beat him. Austin worked on Larizza's campaign and got complaints after the first round of calls, but those who complained were taken off the phone lists and the complaints decreased, he said.

"We got about five to 10 e-mails asking us to remove their number, but we were calling 60,000 people at a time," Austin said.

Ludmilla Lelis can be reached at llelis@orlandosentinel.com or 386-253-0964.