That’s my #1 goal. Probably won’t happen. 1st amendment issue.
How do you envision such a ban working?
Is this just there-oughta-be-a-law venting, or is it an actual practical suggestion?
Remove the carve out for political calls/texts and make them, legally, no different than any other junk calls/texts.
Or maybe revoke their access to everyone’s phone numbers.
Make political calls opt in instead of opt out.
Uh, first here are the current rules…
This election season, like those before, will likely lead to an increase in calls and texts from political campaigns. While campaign calls and texts are exempt from the Do Not Call List requirements, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act contains specific rules they must follow.
In general, robocalls and robotexts to mobile phones require prior consent and calls to landlines are allowed without prior consent. But there are exceptions detailed below.
Political Robocall Restrictions
Political campaign-related autodialed or prerecorded voice calls, including autodialed live calls, autodialed texts, and prerecorded voice messages, are prohibited to cell phones, pagers or other mobile devices without the called party’s prior express consent. The same restrictions apply to protected phone lines such as emergency or toll-free lines, or lines serving hospitals or similar facilities.
Political campaign-related autodialed or prerecorded voice calls are permitted when made to landline telephones, even without prior express consent.
All prerecorded voice message calls, campaign-related and otherwise, must include certain identification information:
- The identity of the business, individual, or other entity initiating the call must be clearly stated at the beginning of the prerecorded message.
- If the calling party is a business or corporate entity, the entity’s official business name must be stated clearly at the beginning of the message.
- The telephone number of the calling party must be provided, either during or after the message.
Political Robotexts
Robotexts – text messages generated through autodialing – are also considered a type of call and fall under all robocall rules.
As text messages generally go to mobile phones, robotexts require the called party’s prior express consent. However, political text messages can be sent without the intended recipient’s prior consent if the message’s sender does not use autodialing technology to send such texts and instead manually dials them.
Report Unwanted Calls and Texts
If you think you’ve received a political robocall or text that does not comply with the FCC’s rules, you can file an informal complaint with the FCC at fcc.gov/complaints. If you are receiving texts that you didn’t ask for, report the sender by forwarding the texts to 7726 (or “SPAM”). Campaigns should also honor opt-out requests if you reply “STOP.”
~Max
That’s one of the ‘tricks’ they’re using now. Instead of wardialing or robocalling, they have people that are essentially sending out texts manually (using software, but still not robocalling/robotexting).
The first one I found states “Political Text Message Marketing so powerful, the ability to contact cell phones without worrying about TCPA, FCC, or Opt-In list requirements. Since there is a live human sending the messages, there are no sending restrictions. It’s no different than having a volunteer phone banking at the campaign headquarters”.
In other words “Are you running for office? Here’s a way to just barely skirt the law and annoy all your potential/current constituents.”
Well yes, but when you have a real person placing the call (or text) you run into First Amendment concerns. I remember reading that when a state tried to ban unsolicited campaign calls, the federal courts struck that down since it was a content based restriction rather than time place or manner. The courts reckoned that a content based restriction is only allowed if it is for a compelling government interest and narrowly tailored to further said interest. But IIRC simply outlawing campaign calls can never be the most narrowly tailored way to protect people’s privacy, because there are less restrictive measures such as
- do not call lists
- preventing people from calling during night time
On the compelling government interest front, the perfect is the enemy of the good. For example if the state allows unsolicited charity calls but bans campaign calls, that undermines how important citizen privacy is to the state.
~Max
I’m okay with banning unsolicited charity calls as well.
The problem is, is that campaign calls are exempt from the do not call list.
There should come a point where your freedom of speech is inferior to my freedom of not having to hear you.
Same. If I want to donate to a charity, I will let them know.
Agreed. Hence what I was saying earlier that the carve out for political calls should be removed.
I’d even settle for an “election year” specific DNC list. If I could go to a national registry every other year, enter my phone number, click opt out and know I wouldn’t get any political calls/texts, I could be okay with that.
I can’t get Purple Heart to stop calling me every few weeks. I’ve told them to stop calling. I’ve told them to stop calling again. I’ve called them back and asked them to stop calling. I’ve told them (since they’re local) that I “moved to [location hundreds of miles away” back in 2005. All make no difference even though every.single.time they’ve said they’ll take my number off the list. It’s like dealing with a fucking debt collector that has my number because some dead beat keeps using it for loans/credit cards/medical billing they’re never going to pay back.
I’ve given up. Now, and I know it’s wrong cuz these calls are just random volunteers working with little more than a list of phone numbers, any time I get a call from them. I’ll call them back a bunch of times, just to be obnoxious, over the next hour or two until I get bored. Fuck’em.
That is a legislature problem, not a constitutional one.
Of course your legislators have an interest in exempting campaign calls from the do-not-call requirements…
~Max