Font size:    Tell a friend

Group seeks ban on celebrity 'robocalls'

(Detriot News)

Group seeks ban on celebrity 'robocalls'

It may be Chris Rock on the phone, but group aims to block automated political messages.

John Wildermuth / San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO -- If Shaun Dakin has his way, you might never get a call from Jack Nicholson again.

Or from Scarlett Johansson, Chris Rock, Jay-Z, Arnold Schwarzenegger and all the other celebrities and politicians who put their glittering names and famous voices on the millions of automated political phone calls that are likely to go out in the weeks leading up to November's election.

Dakin is founder of Citizens for Civil Discourse, a nonpartisan group in Washington, D.C., working to promote a new "National Political Do Not Contact Registry" that includes such "robocalls," which are used in political campaigns ranging from school board elections to the race for president.

"We're advocating for regulation," Dakin said. "We don't want an outright ban, but citizens have a right to privacy. If someone wants to opt out, he should be allowed to do it."

Dakin faces an uphill climb. While the Federal Trade Commission's five-year-old Do Not Call Registry allows people to block calls from telemarketers, it specifically exempts calls from political organizations, citing potential First Amendment concerns.

"The calls are really an inexpensive way for an underdog candidate to get his message out to voters," said Joshua Halpin, spokesman for the American Association of Political Consultants, which supports robot calls. "This is a misguided attack on free speech which could lead us down a slippery slope to bans on direct mail, television ads and other types of political communication."

Even so, politicians in some states have acted after hearing from voters angry at fielding dozens of the automated calls in the days before an election. Oregon, for example, added political robocalls to the state's do-not-call registry in January. But other states, like Indiana, face legal challenges to their effort to curb them.

A study by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center in April showed that recorded calls have become an increasingly popular form of political advertising, moving ahead of mail and personal calls.

In Iowa, where the presidential campaign season opened, the number of citizens who got at least one robocall was 81 percent.

The economics of political campaigning show why the calls aren't going away, said Tom Ross, a Sacramento political consultant whose company, Cardinal Communications Strategies, runs political robocall efforts.

A direct mail piece now costs about 65 cents for every voter it reaches. Each live telephone call costs about 50 cents. But robocalls cost only about 6 cents each, with the price going down with volume.

While some of the calls are little more than a reminder to supporters to get out and vote, robocalls also can go on the attack.

In Indiana in May, the anti-abortion group National Right to Life used robocalls to ask voters to reject Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the state presidential primary. In South Carolina, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made her own robocalls to slam another presidential candidate, ex-North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

But the celebrity calls may be the most effective, Ross said, because studies show listeners stay on the call longer when it's someone famous on the line.

"We did a call with Arnold Schwarzenegger and we found people staying on the line even after it was over, waiting to see if there was more," Ross said.