Cell Phone-only Voters Frustrate Campaigns

Mark Pike and Elana Berkowitz, OffTheBus correspondents, follow the youth beat this week while traveling through Iowa.

Iowa is off the hook, but maybe not so much in the colloquial sense.

With the caucus just a week away, many campaigns are ramping up telemarketing outreach in a last ditch effort to contact potential supporters.

Empirical evidence (ie. staying one night in a Des Moines residence) reveals that households receive upwards of a dozen calls a night. Many of the calls are micro-targeted to residents, informing them of events happening in their neck of the woods and promising intimate appearances with candidates.

"Press 1 if you're interested in attending tomorrow's event." * Presses 1 * "John McCain will be appearing at the Elk's Lodge tomorrow morning at 9:30am. Doors open..."

But what if you're not interested in attending a candidate's events, and have expressed that stance to staffers on multiple occasions? Is there a way to ensure that your phone phone number gets deleted from a candidate's call rolls?

Right now, the most you can do is ask politely.

Currently, there is no legislation blocking charities and political groups from telemarketing in this country. Although phone owners can register their numbers on the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call List and avoid the nuisance of intrusive sales calls, it is impossible to block incoming calls from candidate's caffeinated volunteers and Robotron 3030 (the patent-pending auto-caller that always knows when it's supper time).

Courts would likely decide that legislation limiting political group's ability to use the telephone as an unfair regulation and abridgment of the fundamental First Amendment freedom--the right to peaceably assemble. (ED. NOTE: link to Mainstream Marketing v. FTC).

I tried to get insight into the constitutionality of a political telemarketing ban, but was ironically unable to contact a law professor at the University of Iowa on the telephone. They were probably screening their calls.

But, if you're really annoyed with the constant ringing, one solution seems to be working for many Iowans--cell phones. It seems that political candidates have a harder time acquiring contact information for citizens cell phones as the data is not cheap to obtain. And, candidates run the risk of upsetting voters for wasting their valuable restricted minutes just to remind them to caucus for the umpteenth time.

In fact, many of Des Moines' younger population have skipped out on getting a land-line altogether in favor of their trusty omnipresent cell phones.

Eric Ernst, a Des Moines native was dining at the Waveland Cafe, enjoying time away from his home where the phone was ringing "at least 8 times a day." He added, "on the cell phone, they can't reach me."

According to CBS News, cell phone-only voters (6 percent in the 2004 network exit polls) were younger. Forty-eight percent of them were under the age of 30.

If more citizens ditch the land-lines in favor of cell-phones, could we see political telemarketing go the way of the rotary dialer? Perhaps. Then we can address political SPAM email.

Comments

[shimane]

Great post. It is actually not illegal for pols to call cell phones with auto - dialers.

We are working on an alternative solution, a non-partisan, non-profit Political 'do not call" registry.

http://www.stoppoliticalcalls.org/index.php

Let us know what you think.

Shaun Dakin
CEO and Founder
http://www.stoppoliticalcalls.org/index.php

[AJL711]

Here's the bigger issue with cell-phone only households -- they are completely missed by pollsters (who of course rely on landline-based samples).

While some polls statistically weight their samples by demographics, others do not, which means there is a systematic bias against cell phone only households.

Since cell-phone only households skew younger, this probably means that Obama's supporters are slightly underrepresented. Could make a 1-2% difference when all's said and done.

[dvschase]

on the day of the 2006 elections my cellphone rang all day. Robo calls from Bill Clinton and Rick Santorum.

[ruchild]

Electronic spam mail is the least of the problems out here. Daily there are at least 6 political flyers in the post, and equally as many phone calls nightly to your landline phone, cannot wait for the 3rd to be over and done with out here.

This has been the dumbest (in terms of resources, all those poor trees) election to date, everyone is papering every house with literature that goes straight into the recycling bin. Those glossy color LARGE campaign reminders are atrocious and does not make me want to vote for you, it makes me want to save it all and beat you upside the head with a small tree for the waste associated with your push for office.

Oh and calling me during dinner, not good, calling while we're doing homework, not good, calling me when my mother-in-law has passed (which just happened) not good. STOP CALLING ME, your calls won't sway me at this point, actually they won't at any point, electronic recorded messages do not send that warm and fuzzy feelings, and neither do the poor volunteers who are calling either, but I will politely tell them to bugger off, instead of hanging up.

Its almost over, finally!!

[Aaror]

The solution to spam e-mail has been around for years, but no one is willing to implement it. Charge a hundreth of a cent per mail per recipient. For most people that would cost a buck, for spammers it would be thousands of dollars. Would you pay a dollar to have spam drastically reduced? But no one will do it because the "less shady," spammers have the funds to block the fix. After all, what corporation doesn't have a newsletter they want to send you everytime you visit their web page?

[nicho]

It's also illegal to use auto-dialers to call cell phones. So, that would discourage political harassers from calling them.