"Dirty Trick" Robocall in GA Used To Increase Turnout Rather Than Decrease It
Washington, DC - Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry - Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
This is the first time that I've heard of robo calls try to scare (click here to hear the audio) people into voting. A "dirty trick" robo call in the Georgia primary this past week was used to, get this, scare people into voting.
Hundreds of Banks and Jackson County citizens were startled Tuesday afternoon when they received telephone calls warning that they would be taken off of the voter rolls if they didn't vote in Tuesday's primary runoff.
Very weird.
If a campaign is going to use robo calls without identifying who paid for the call typically this is done with the intent of suppressing the vote of those citizens that you think are most likely to vote for your opposition.
That makes sense. Not ethical. But in politics very little is ethical.
In this case, however, the call's purpose seemed to have been to scare people into voting. Perhaps this campaign thought that they needed to scare their voters to the polls and decided to call everyone with the message.
Now, this story said that GA authorities don't know if this is illegal or not.
I have news for them. NOTHING is illegal in GA when it comes to elections.
That is right. Last week the GA legislature passed a law that removes any language that required campaigns to identify who was paying for a campaign communication (ad, mail, phone, etc..).
Here is my full post on this issue. This from the AJC:
Politicians and special-interest groups don't have to tell you that they're the ones filling your mailbox with campaign propaganda this election season.
Under little-noticed legislation passed on the final day of the 2008 session and signed into law by Gov. Sonny Perdue, candidates and "independent" groups backing candidates no longer have to disclose who they are on their mailings.
When it comes to GA, nothing is off the table.
Washington, DC - Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry - Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
