I hate them, but there’s nothing I can do since the Do Not Call List has an exemption for politicians (almost as thought it was written by them or something). The “I’m so great please vote for me” and “My opponent is a lying sack of shit” ones are merely annoying. The ones masquerading as actual messages from neighbors: “Hey, this is John from up the street. Did you know candidate X kicks puppies?”* are infuriating not so much for the scumbaggery involved, but because of the presumption of stupidity on the part of the voter. The ones that truly deserve a special place in Hell are push polls, because of the very real possibility of poisoning the well. I always excoriate those guys in the most ugly language I can muster (and I can muster quite a bit). Yes, they are probably just kids who need money, but they must know they are lying and perverting the democratic process even more than it already has been.
If it’s a real survey, yeah, but so many of the “survey” calls will ask questions like “does the fact that Omaba is the greatest orator on earth make you more likely to vote for him” or “Does the fact that Obama is a secret muslim, under the pay of Bin Laden make you more or less lilkely to vote for him”. In reality they are only slightly more subtle that this.
the wackiest one I got this year was from some candidate’s mother.
Did she not realize that her high opinion of her son’s qualifications would necessarily be seen as a tad biased? What, was I supposed to go “MY God! Even his mother thinks I should vote for him!”
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a political phone call. Is it because I haven’t had a landline in years and they don’t call cell phones? Or because I have always lived in solid blue states that get virtually no political campaigning? Of course, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten political calls from local campaigns either.
I had a call come in that according to the caller ID was from the Village of Elgin, the town I live in. It was a very nice sounding young lady who wanted to know if I was planning to vote in the fall. I said yes, and she asked me about both the presidential candidate I was more likely to vote for and the congressional candidate I was most likely to vote for. I pleasently answered her questions.
Then she asked what one issue was the most important one issue for me in the upcoming election. I told her it was legalizing LSD.
I lived in Ohio in 2004. I kept my phone on silent for all of October and up to election day in November.
Yes, the political calls just a bit out of hand then. I can only imagine what it is like now.
I hate robocallers. I know why they’re used, but I still hate them.
For the surveys, both the legit ones and the very slimy political commercial disguised as a survey, I’m willing to play along.
Which does absolutely nothing for the robocallers. As for the survey types, they’ve called me at a time convenient for them. They get whatever response or attitude I find convenient for me.
I had the RNC call ME, (I about fell off my chair), asking for ME and my husband and THANKING ME FOR OUR SUPPORT.
To me, this just shows how out of touch the RNC is with real people. In this day and age, who assumes that the wife shares the same political party as her husband? Did they ever assume that after say, Harding? Not only did I correct this caller, I asked to be taken off the list.
I got 3 calls within the next week–all from the RNC, all asking for my support for McPain (that’s our pet name for him–even my husband, a GOP all his life won’t be voting for McCain this fall). The next to last phone call, I blew up at them. I asked to talk to the supervisor–no go. I told them heatedly that their constant calling was tantamount to harassment and that I wanted to know what it took to get MY name off this “list”. I also (when I talked to all of these pollsters) asked them why they assume that since the husband is Rep, the wife must be also? No good answers from any of them.
The last time they called, I did something I consider to be horribly rude: I picked up and hung up right away. Funny thing, they haven’t called back. Perhaps I was street theater for some of the callers? Or maybe they were prank calling me? I’ll never know. I do know that even if I had been on the fence, their phone treatment of me would have made me rethink allying myself to such a boneheaded party. Impressions count, even on a 3 minute phone call.
IAACampaign Volunteer. Our candidate has decided not to use the robo-dialer service because these calls annoy pretty much everyone. There are more effective ways to get the message out that don’t involve alienation of potential voters.
That said, the caller claiming to be the guy up the street probably is. The parties have access to voting records, and it’s not uncommon for a campaign to pull this information to make calls in favor of its candidate. (Relax. The database doesn’t show who you voted for, just that you voted. If it was a primary, the database will show which party’s primary you voted in, but not the specific candidate(s).)
In 20 years of being eligible to vote, I never got a political call. Seriously.
Then…this year. Before, I was registered to vote, and my political party was “None.” No calls. But this year I had to register as a Democrat to vote for Obama in the primary…and the floodgates opened.
I admit…I got a bit tired of the calls. I just hang up. No big deal.
How do the logistics of this work? Do you get a person to record a message then only send it to those voters who live within X miles of that person? It seems like you’d need an awful lot of people to record messages to reach all or most of the eligible voters.
To be clear, the message was not at all like “Hi, I’m Respected-Pillar-of-the-Community Man. I think all the voters in this town should know what’s wrong with that guy running for Congress.” It was more like “Psst! This is Common-First-Name-No-Last-Name Man, I claim to live near you. I just heard some juicy gossip about that scumbag running for Congress and I knew that you, personally, would enjoy hearing it.”
Potayto-Potahto, I suppose.
Do you actually encounter people who think there’s a database that shows who they voted for? How do they think this would work? Somebody with a clipboard looks over the voter’s shoulder?
Most of the calls I get are pre-recorded messages. I hang on up on those.
I can only recall ever getting one that wasn’t a recording. It was a call from the Obama campaign (I’ve donated to him) and it was actually a pleasant 5 minute conversation.
The caller did ask for more money which I politely declined. She didn’t press nor did she try to end the call immediately afterwards. She also asked if it would be OK to call me back in a few months.
All in all, not a bad experience and I’d welcome another call.
Could be either one. IME, I don’t get those calls, but I’ve known people who volunteer to call neighbors.
No, but there are those people who are [del]paranoid[/del] fastidious about maintaining their privacy. They assume that if you have some of their information, you have all of their information. My county also went to computerized voting machines, so that attitude isn’t that far-fetched.