Tell a friendRoboCops Needed for Political Robocalls?
July 5, 2012
PROVO, Utah - Hold the phone! Robocall season is
underway in Utah, along with the election
season. Political robocalls are exempted from National Do Not Call
Registry regulations, and some families have
been targeted for several calls a day.
Shaun Dakin
founded the National Political Do Not Contact
Registry in 2007, hoping candidates
would use the list to refine their calling
logs. He describes robocalls as
"disrespectful" of voters, because they're
one-sided conversations.
"Robocalls are the perfect
example of a marketing political machine with
no civil discourse, no debate, no democracy.
It's phone spam. You can't have a debate with a
robocall."
Often, a
call appears to come from a candidate, but it's
really from a Political Action Committee (PAC),
he says, and the "disclaimer" is impossible to
understand unless you record the call and
listen to it several times.
Dakin condemns the calls as
more than annoyance. He has
collected stories from Utah and around the
country about how robocalls tie up lines
being kept open for emergencies, disrupt the sleep of
night-shift workers, and disturb people who
have mental health issues.
"For example, if a senior
citizen answers the call and they have
dementia, they get confused, they get agitated,
then their adult children have to leave their
jobs and come and take care of their
parents."
He
adds that some research has shown the calls to
be ineffective, and they can alienate voters
who support the cause. He has also documented
cases where families have received 10 political
robocalls in one day.
More
information is available at www.StopPoliticalCalls.org.