And the phones keep ringing...
As a follow-up to last week's post, Cell Phone-only Voters Frustrate Campaigns, here's some more info for those of you growing increasingly frustrated by political telemarketing.
Interestingly, one of the presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama, recently introduced a bill in the Senate to prevent some political calls. There's also several House bills that have been circulating that would regulate many election-related phone calls.
Rep. Melissa Bean , D-Ill., recently testified that the National Republican Congressional Committee placed push polling robo-calls during the 2006 election in an effort to unseat her.
"They would describe how the calls woke up their babies, interrupted their dinner, kept leaving them messages on their cell phones that were received late at night or forced them to run to grab the phone, and all they would hear is 'Hello, I am calling with information about Melissa Bean ,' for the second, third, fourth time a day," Bean told a subcommittee
Many citizens in Iowa have been complaining about recent push polling, where negative things are said about all but one candidate (in many cases, Gov. Huckabee).
Some Iowans have gone so far as to add the digits that appear on their caller ID systems to wikis on the Internet, such as whocalled.us, in a high-tech cyber sleuthing effort to get to the bottom of the mysterious calls.
But citizens of swing states remain frustrated by the patchwork solutions to the push polling problem and are looking for legislative bodies to come to their aid. However, there are plenty of First Amendment issues to consider when restricting political speech.
Marc Rotenberg, the Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said, "the Do Not Call list explicitly exempts political calls because of important First Amendment interest and a federal appeals court has said this is constitutional" referencing the Mainstream Marketing v. FTC decision. "If someone wants to talk to you about how to change the country, the government shouldn't intervene. But if they are calling about vacation property, the government can help you put them on permanent hold."
Professor Donald Tortorice from William & Mary School of Law also chimed in with his constitutional analysis.
Tortorice said, "Favoring the appropriateness of regulating political cold-calls are a number of decisions of state and federal circuit courts holding that auto-dial calls can be regulated and are not prohibited by either federal statute or constitutional constraint. These holdings, most recently in the eighth federal circuit (Van Bergen v. Minnesota, 59 F3d. 1541) and North Dakota (ND Sup. Ct. No. 06-127) have held that regulation of unsolicited calls are matters of significant public interest and encompass the duty to protect the privacy of citizens and the authority to protect the peaceful enjoyment of the home as well as the general well being and tranquility of the community."
However, Tortorice pointed out that in Miles v. Alabama (384 US 476), the Court said that protection of First Amendment political speech is a profound national commitment to the principal that debate on public issues should be "uninhibited, robust and wide-open."
Tortorice added, "I tend to think that an arbitrary limitation may be constitutionally vulnerable, while a more discriminating regulation, such as allowing the public to sign on to acceptance or refusal lists, would probably pass constitutional muster. However, given the recent shifts in Court membership and ideologies, projecting the result with any assurance is somewhat ill advised."
Those who hesitate to make any legislation to regulate the rampant use of push polling might want to take a look at the tell-all book from Allen Raymond, a convicted Republican phone jammer. Raymond reveals many of the politicians' dirtiest phone tricks.
Cleaning up telephone politics should be an easy call for Congress.