Screwing the voters

So, just a few years after the New Hampshire Republicans, who were supported by the national apparatus, decided to screw the voters, the national party is trying, yet again, to screw voters.

The newest is an illegal subterfuge designed to piss off voters. TalkingPointsMemo reports:

The lead into the call starts with the speaker saying 'I'm calling with information about' Dem candidate X. Then there's a short pause.

At this point, you know it's an annoying robocall, so a lot of people just hang up. If you hang up then, you think it's a call from the Democratic candidate.

Second, the repetition. And this part is the key. If you don't listen through the whole message, the machine keeps calling you back, often well in excess of half a dozen times with the same call. It only stops if you listen all the way through.

As you can imagine, that's driving a lot of people through the roof.

In other words, the Republicans behind the calls win either way. If you keep hanging up, you think you're being harassed by the campaign of the local Democratic House candidate. If you give up and listen all the way through, you hear the political attack. The true source of the call, the NRCC, the GOP House campaign committee, is only revealed at the end of the call.

(Federal regulations dictate calls be identified at the top of the call.)

CrooksAndLiars offers links to CNN video. The CNN reporter offers the hard-hitting observation that the FCC requires a phone number and the name of the caller up front and at least one ad "doesn't seem to do either." Hello -- it does or it doesn't. Are you afraid someone's going to find a stage whisper at -30db in the recordings?

Either way, it's interesting, and appalling, stuff. The New York Times offers a link through MediaNation, with a sign that this silly, evil bullshit could backfire:

David Kaplan, a registered Republican in Connecticut who has received more than two dozen of the calls, said he was so annoyed that the Republicans might “have shot themselves in the leg” in terms of winning his vote.

Is it too much to ask someone to follow the law?