Bill proposed to curtail campaign automated phone calls

ROBOCALLS-Day

New London Day

Erin Kutz

Boston University Washington News Service

February 27, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Nearly two-thirds of voters—90 million people—received automated phone messages during the 2006 election year, according to a 2006 Pew Research Center study. Now members of Congress are moving to restrict the practice.

Also known as robocalls, the phone messages cost less than a dime each and can target tens of thousands of homes in just an hour. Recipients of the calls complain that they flood phone lines several times a day and night, interrupt family or work time, and eat up pricey cell phone minutes.

And robocalls can frequently come as attack ads from an opposing campaign and do not identify themselves as so until the end of the message.

In first week of November 2006, the National Republican Congressional Committee spent nearly $13,000 on robocalls attacking U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-2nd District), according to a 2006 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee press release. 

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation earlier this month to restrict political candidate’s abusive use of automated phone messages to voters. Her bill would prohibit these calls between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. and ban the same campaign from calling a phone line more than twice per day. The measure also requires callers to identify themselves at the beginning of the message and prohibits them from blocking their numbers on caller ID. 

In 2007, the House passed bills prohibiting any calls from either leaving phone numbers other than the ones from which they originated or transmitting false caller ID information.

James Bopp Jr., an attorney at the James Madison Center for Free Speech, a conservative free speech advocacy group, told the Senate Rules and Administration Committee that the bill would curtail First Amendment rights to free speech. He said the “unconstitutionally vague” and “overbroad” language in Feinstein’s bill could inhibit grassroots and issues-oriented organizations’ ability to advocacy.

Bopp also pointed to a Supreme Court ruling upholding citizens’ rights to distribute door-to-door literature and place political signs in their lawns as evidence of the legislation’s unconstitutionality.

But Feinstein answered that “a political yard sign is a benign instrument. A telephone is not.” Calls, in other words, are intrusive.

Bopp said political candidates should decide how to use robocalls based on how voters respond. “The market will deal with this,” he said. “People who are doing these calls have no desire to alienate or offend anyone.”

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), the panel’s highest ranking Republican, said he himself had ended his robocall campaigns when voters complained, but that candidates have no ability to stop opponents from making robocalls against them.

In 2003, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission established the National Do Not Call Registry, which enables people to remove their numbers from telemarketer’s lists. But it does not apply to automated political phone calls.

Feinstein said she declined to include the Do Not Call Registry restrictions in her bill because she thought Congress would not support it, considering more than 140 million people are on the list.

The National Political Do Not Contact Registry, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization aiming to extend the restrictions of the National Do Not Call list to political phone calls launched in October. Voters can register their information on The National Political Do Not Contact Registry for free and the organization will advocate for politicians to remove them from their call lists, said CEO and founder Shaun Dakin.

The organization also charges a fee for voters to select who they want to hear from, how they want to be contacted and what issues they want to hear about, he said. Rep.Virginia Foxx (R-N.C) is the only member of Congress who has used the organization’s data and complied with voter requests, he added.

Feinstein said she would consider adding the protection under the National Political Do Not Contact Registry to her bill.

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