Connect the dots: Republican robo-calls begin by offering 'important

[ProgressiveEconomist]

information about Lois Murphy' (or some other Democratic candidate), with no indication that Republicans paid for the call to offer NEGATIVE disinformation about the Democratic candidate. (See http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/15898729.htm , for example).

But, according to one Ohio mastermind behind hundreds of thousands of calls, "in a typical campaign, half of the homes answered the calls. About 20 percent of the people who were called answered some of the questions, he said, and only about 10 percent completed an entire survey." (See http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/us/politics/06push.html?pagewanted=print ).

Connect the dots: If the Republican calls identified their sponsors at the end of the message, as is customary on TV ads, 90 percent of those who received calls never would hear that information. And if they hung up early enough, call recipients would think they'd been harassed by a Democratic candidate!

IMO, campaign robo-calls must be regulated, and there should be criminal penalties for omitting from the VERY BEGINNING of any robo-call the name of the funder and the intended beneficiary or negative target of the message.

What do you think?

[drm604]

1. I agree.

I've received a number of the Lois Murphy calls. I'm politically knowledgeable enough not to fall for it but there are many people who may be swayed.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. Has anyone taped an entire "Lois Murphy" call? Did the Rs behind

the calls ever identify themselves within the script? At the end of the message?

[drm604]

4. I just checked my voice-mail.

All I had was one message from Ed Rendell and one from Bill Clinton, so I haven't gotten one of those fake Lois Murphy calls yet today. They may do it one more time today or tomorrow, if so I can save it. There's a thread on DU somewhere where someone mentioned an internet service that lets you record your voice-mails onto your hard drive. I'll try to find that thread and save the message if I get it.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

5. Great! See also hedda-foil's thread. I've seen her threads result

in MSM news stories! She points out the importance of getting immediate call-backs on record, for potential YouTube evidence of R harassment masquerading as D harassment. See http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2593219&mesg_id=2593219

[drm604]

6. Here's the thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2588101

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. Great site! Thanks for the link. If you're going to record the entire call,

I guess it doesn't make sense to wait for a callback. Your site sounds PERFECT for recording a complete call.

Callbacks may just come to people who hang up too soon for "call complete" to register on the robo-call computer. If people hang up fairly quickly on the first call, then hedda_foil's instructions make much more sense.

[izzie]

2. Thank God by letting the PC run I miss all sewer calls.

And I do mean I get calls to fix my sewer.

[TornadoTN]

7. Almost all of the Pro-Corker calls are this way!

"Please listen to this call, as it has important information from Harold Ford, Jr."

Then it turns into anti-Ford diatribe without any identifying information (sometimes there is a quick message at the end listing some unknown organization if you can even understand the message)

[phylny]

9. I just got another from the NRCC, and I called e-mailed and called them.

I told them that their incessant phone calls have now forced me to vote for the Democrat in my district ;)

I also removed our phone number from their database for next time.

From their site: http://www.nrcc.org/contact/

Contacting Us

Mailing Address

National Republican Congressional Committee
320 First Street, S.E
Washington, D.C. 20003

Phone Numbers

NRCC Main Number - [phone]

News Media Inquiries - [phone]

Information on Contributing - [phone]

To contact us by email, please send a message to [e-mail].

[ProgressiveEconomist]

10. Great contact info! Did you see Keith Olberman on MSNBC tonight?

He played an entire 30-second-or-so robocall from the NRCC with disinfo on Tammi Duckworth. The NRCC identified themselves only at the very end of the call. Keith said that voters MSNBC talked to had received up to 12 such calls in rapid succession. Only by letting the entire call play could voters be fairly sure that the robo-call machine would not keep redialing and redialing them.

Thus, recipients of repeat calls would only hear "important information about Tammi Duckworth," over and over again.

Later on the same show, Howard Dean said the DNC knew about the robo-calls and "it's not us".