Kucinich Makes Illegal Robocalls in California To Impeach Bush
Washington, DC - Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry - Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
Dennis Kucinich, the ex-Mayor of Cleveland and current Member of Congress, is desperate to get the American people to support his call to have hearings on possible impeachment of President GW Bush.
While he can use virtually any communication tool he wishes to use - direct mail, press, tv, internet, email, etc.. - he may want to hold off on continuing to make robo calls in California. The fine is $500 per incident.
Today, StopPoliticalCalls.org, received 100's of official complaints from our members about robo calls that Kucinich is making into the state of CA urging them to support his call for hearings on impeachment.
As I've written about before, unfortunately for Kucinich, California has existing code on the books, enforced by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that effectively outlaws robo calls by limiting them to calls that are preceded by a live voice. No robo call is preceded by a live voice.
You can read about the CPUC code at this blog entry I made a few months ago.
Here are the details about the California Public Utilities Code sections 2871-2876.
The CPUC Code Sections 2871-2876 clearly prohibits any form of auto-dialer calls or robocalls being made in California unless the call is preceded by a live voice: “only after an unrecorded, natural voice announcement has been made to the person called by the person calling.”
If you are interested in learning more about StopPoliticalCalls.org please visit our website.
We have set up a specific CA robo call complaint form as well. Once you have registered at the Registry, please return to StopIllegalCARoboCalls.org and fill out the form to ensure that we have the details that we need to bring a complaint to the CPUC.
UPDATE:
Cleveland Plain Dealer did a story here.
UPDATE: Kucinich spokesman Andy Juniewicz confirmed the congressman's re-election campaign made robo-calls in the past few days to parts of California where "there is a strong receptivity to the impeachment message" but said the calls stopped today when the campaign realized "there might be an issue" with California laws.
He called the law's wording "obscure and to some extent, ambiguous" and said the campaign's legal counsel "will be in touch with the telephone companies and any other relvant state agencies in California to further address this if it needs to be further addressed."
Juniewicz said he didn't know how much money Kucinich's re-election campaign spent on the robo-calls.
