It was a dark and stormy night when DLR <news22@raleighthings.com>
wrote:
> Non profits seem to be excluded from the Do Not Call lists. And as
> someone who lives in a house with people registered in both parties,
> yes, both parties and their candidates pester us all the time with
> surveys and get out the vote calls as primaries and general elections
> approach.
As one who makes some of those calls, I can give you a hint, at least
with the surveys. Most of them are done by the various individual
campaigns, in an attempt to categorize people into three groups: those
who are gonna vote for us, those who are gonna vote against us, and
the undecided. People who are firmly for or against don't get any
more survey calls. (Being largely volunteer operations of varying
competence, however, screwups do happen.) The undecided get more
sales material, maybe even a call from the candidate him or herself,
and another survey later. As long as you're undecided, we'll keep
coming back. The "for" people will receive get-out-the-vote calls,
the "against" people won't (we would, after all, prefer that they
forget to vote).
Multiply it all by the number of campaigns in your area. :(
We might not volunteer the name of the candidate we're calling in
behalf of, but at least in this state we have to tell you if you ask.
I suppose if it was a "real" nonpartisan survey, or one that was
contracted out to a market research company, the caller wouldn't know
who the client was (they probably don't share that info with the
minimum-wage peons who make the calls).
It was a dark and stormy night when PAT wrote:
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, if you recall during the last
> election there were various Republicans who got in trouble (put on
> trial and sent to jail actually) for jamming the phone lines of the
> Democrats; was it in Connecticut? PAT]
New Hampshire. Fallout from the case is still going on, the guy in
New Hampshire running the scam (James Tobin, the Republican director
for New England, who later became Bush's New England campaign chair)
made several dozen calls to a White House political affairs office
number on election day (while the jamming was going on), and the White
House is stonewalling on telling exactly whose desk that phone number
went to. Tobin was convicted, there have been a couple of other plea
bargains, and the owner of the telemarketing firm that actually made
the hangup calls is awaiting trial.
Dave Garland (dave.garland@wizinfo.com)