Thursday, November 30, 2006
Editorial: Say no to robo-calls
A movement against automated, prerecorded campaign pitches is gaining momentum in Virginia -- and other states.
From the RoundTable blog
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Del. Bob Brink, D-Arlington, wants to hang up on robo-calls.
He has in his hands the first draft of state legislation to be introduced in the 2007 General Assembly that would regulate the use of automatic dialing devices to send recorded messages.
He's taking aim at automated political phone calls. But his measure would address any unsolicited automated call.
"There is no reason to permit this kind of intrusion into the privacy of your own home," Brink says.
Hear, hear.
What set Brink afire was the common campaign practice of bombarding households with prerecorded political pitches. He'd learned of cases such as the Connecticut woman, preparing for breast cancer surgery and awaiting news on a biopsy, who received dozens -- she estimated 60 -- unsolicited calls during that state's primary season.
Add to that the supposed political trickery in the weeks before the Nov. 7 election, of Republicans generating robo-calls disguised to appear to come from Democrats, and Brink, like others, was spurred into action. His voice has joined the chorus of many singing "the outrage, the intrusiveness."
Some politicos pooh-pooh that thinking as exaggeration. Yes, voters may hang up, but their irritation doesn't bear out in the voting booth, they argue.
Brink's measure has company. Indiana has a law -- on which Brink's legislation is modeled -- that regulates automatic dialing devices. A robo-call ban might be on the Connecticut legislative agenda next year. And anti-robo-call measures have been hinted at in Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin.
At the federal level, a House bill was introduced last year that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to revise Do No Call registry regulations to prohibit politically oriented recorded message calls to numbers on the registry.
The bill -- so cleverly dubbed Robo COP Act: Robo Calls Off Phones -- was referred to the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Its status is unclear. But the bill was introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., in April 2005, long before this year's robo-call outcry.
The bill has six co-sponsors, including Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Norfolk, who signed on earlier this month after constituents complained of robo-calls during this last campaign cycle.
Clearly, robo-calls have someone's attention.
And Virginia should act now to place limitations on such invasiveness.
