Robo-calls

10/19/2009

It's late October. Tis the season for ghosts, goblins, and robo–calls. With the November election two weeks away, political campaigns have kicked into high gear.

Like most people, George Robertson finds calls from telemarketers annoying. Especially the prerecorded messages known as robo–calls.

Robertson: "It isn't just annoying. It's dangerous."

Robertson is an architect in Seattle.

Robertson: "I mean, I've driven right off the side of the road, I didn't end up in the ditch, I was just beyond the fog line, because I'm fumbling to pick up the cell phone, it's on the floor, you know, it's not safe."

Robertson says he gets the calls all the time, almost every day, and he wishes they were illegal. Some of those calls are illegal. Shannon Smith is a consumer–protection lawyer in the Washington Attorney General's office.

Smith: "Washington state law prohibits the use of prerecorded telephone calls for unsolicited commercial solicitations."

So any recorded call trying to sell you something? It's against the law.

Charities and debt collectors are still allowed to ask you for money with robo–calls. Hospitals and schools can blast informational messages over thousands of phone lines at once. The federal government has also clamped down on telemarketing.

Since September, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) only allows telemarketers to make robo–calls if they have written permission beforehand from the people they call.

But neither state law or federal law prevents pre–recorded politicians from lighting up your phone lines when they want to win your vote.

Michael Tankersley is a lawyer with the FTC.

Tankersley: "The rule only covers messages that are part of a telemarketing campaign. Political message calls are not a part of telemarketing. "

Ryan: "So trying to sell a candidate in effect to a voter is not considered a form of trying to market that?"

Tankersley: "That's right, that's right. There are no federal regulations concerning prerecorded calls for political purposes."

If you're a cynic, you might say Congress gave itself a break by letting political robo–calls off the hook.

If you're an idealist, you might say they respected the First Amendment and the freedom of political speech. Either way, it's open season on your telephone.

Recording: "Next message. This is the Seattle voter poll calling. Your household has been scientifically selected for a two–minute voter survey."

You may have already gotten some automated messages and phone surveys on the Seattle mayor's race.

Recording: "Hi, this is Mike McGinn, candidate for Mayor. I'm calling to invite you."

Mike McGinn's opponent is Joe Mallahan. His campaign says it hasn't decided whether to use robo–calls in the campaign's last two weeks. Tina Podlodowski is chair of the Mallahan campaign.

Podlodowski: "You know, I think that they're a mixed bag. Sometimes they can be incredibly effective, and sometimes they can be, well, frankly, incredibly annoying. I think it all depends upon the call itself."

Most Americans hang up on robo–calls. That's according to a poll conducted last year by the Pew Research Center. But most people consider the calls only a minor annoyance. Only 13 percent say the calls make them angry. Campaigns typically spend much more on TV ads and glossy flyers.

But robo–calls let campaigns reach lots of voters cheaply with little fear of alienating too many of them. Both candidates for King County Executive spent thousands of dollars on robo–calls leading up to the August primary. That's according to their latest campaign–finance reports.

Dow Constantine has raised about $800,000 for his campaign.

That's at least $200,000 more than any other political candidate this year in Washington state. At a fund–raiser in a bar on Queen Anne, Constantine said campaigns have to be able to reach voters in a targeted way.

Constantine: "Nobody myself incl'd much likes robo–calls, but we use them selectively to communicate particularly about events, when there are just not enough hands to make the thousand calls that need to be made for an event."

Susan Hutchison has raised about a $500,000. Her spokesman Jordan McCarren says the campaign has no plans to use any more robo–calls.

Both campaigns report having close to $200,000 of cash on hand.

So King County voters can expect a flood of political advertising, in various forms, until November 3. I'm John Ryan, KUOW News.

© Copyright 2009, KUOW