Dirty politics

[elizilla]

I just got a recorded message on my phone. I picked it up and it was already playing "... and I am a Democratic state senator. I urge you to vote for Markman, O'Brien, and Zahra on the non-partisan state supreme court ballot." The three names were repeated several times, but the caller's name never was. My other research indicates these are the Republican candidates. I wonder if all the registered Democrats are getting this recording, and the lost first few seconds is intentional? Dirty politics, sigh.

Comments

[encorecrazay.livejournal.com]

I was able to use a service from my phone provider (at&t uverse) to only allow selected numbers to ring through to my home phone, haven't had a robo-call all election season. They had an alternative service to block specific numbers which I used in the past, but with all the different ones that are being used by the various camps, ...

[khaylock]

Can you contact the media about that? It seems like the sort of thing that should be a crime, certainly a lot more reminiscent of a banana republic than a great democracy...

[elizilla]

I don't know if it's a crime. The judge ballot is "non-partisan" which means they don't tell us which party the candidates are allied with. They aren't allowed to have an official alliance. Anyone can support any of them, and the voter needs to specifically seek info in advance to find out what kind of views they have. The idea is that the judges are supposed to be non-partisan and decide the cases on their merits, instead of going in already favoring a particular side. And some of them do their jobs that way, even though they have roots on one side or the other. But we have had a few get in who were determined to use their posts for right wing agendas. A few years ago we had one that was intentionally fucking with the adoption proceedings for gay couples, and there have been a number of them that can't find in favor of big corporations fast enough when a corporation gets sued. That latter group seems to be what these three jokers belong to.

So if there's any crime in this robo-call, it's someone claiming to be a Democrat when they aren't. And I don't know who it is, or who paid for that call. My phone has literally rung off the hook for the last week with these robo calls, and I have been hanging up on them. The only reason I listened to that one is because it came while I was researching specifically for the election, and the voice said she was talking about judges - and info on the judges is often hard to find. But if I listen to the full message on one call of the hundreds, and hear dirty pool, I wonder how many others are also doing that?

The phone company won't tell me who all these callers are, and I don't have caller ID in my landline phone - I only even have a landline phone for my work, and it normally never rings in the evening unless it's some sort of telemarketer. And yes, I am on the do not call list so the sales calls are illegal too. But with very little enforcement, and no cooperation from the phone company, all you can do is hang up on them.