Push Polling, Robo Calls and Other Telephonic Shenanigans

Dirty tricks, or HARDBALL Politics?

With a razor-tight race in the Democratic Primary and a prominent "good-bye" given in the Republican race, I thought it was a good time to look for, or analyze the shenanigans or downright dirty tricks of these campaigns of candidates seeking our highest office in the land.

Push Poll is a political campaign technique in which an individual or organization attempts to influence or alter the view of respondents under the guise of conducting a poll. In a push poll, large numbers of respondents are contacted, and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll. Push polls are generally viewed as a form of negative campaigning [1]. The term is also sometimes used inaccurately to refer to legitimate polls which test political messages, some of which may be negative.

Robocall is American pejorative jargon for an automated telemarketing phone call which uses both a computerized autodialer and a computer-delivered recorded message. The implication is that a "robocall" resembles a telephone call from a robot.

Some states (23 according to DMNews) have laws that distinguish political robocalls from other kinds of political telemarketing. For example, in Indiana and North Dakota, automated telemarketing calls are illegal.[1][2] In NH, political robocalls are allowed –- except when the recipient is in the National Do Not Call Registry.[3] Many states require the disclosure of who paid for the call, often requiring such notice be recorded in the candidate's own voice.

So with the definitional context, who uses these things. Well, everyone. And they all get criticized. The Clinton campaign criticized the Obama campaign for making illegal Robocalls in New Hampshire.

Here are two examples of Robocalls. One for Barack. One against Barack Hussein Obama.

Good Call: Here's a recording of the Scarlett Johansson call, where she asks the recipient in California to "join me and thousands of other independent voters in supporting Barack Obama tomorrow."

Bad Call: The Obama campaign has released a recording (mp3) it says came from a Nevadan's answering machine of an anonymous robocall that criticizes Obama for taking money from special interests while repeating, four times, his rarely used middle name: "Hussein."

"I'm calling with some important information about Barack Hussein Obama," the call begins, before saying that "Barack Hussein Obama says he doesn't take money from Washington lobbyists or special interest groups but the record is clear that he does."

After mentioning his full name once more, the call concludes:

"You just can't take a chance on Barack Hussein Obama."

Click here to listen to the campaign's recording of the call.

The Los Angeles Times reports that someone supporting Hillary Clinton is push-polling for the candidate

Someone who obviously favors Hillary Clinton is paying an unidentified company to spread this material phone call by phone call among independent voters, who can, according to California party rules, opt to vote in the Democratic but not the Republican primary on Feb. 5, when nearly two dozen states will choose a large chunk of the delegates to the parties' national conventions next summer.

Coghlan said he was offended by such underhanded tactics and knew he was going to get out a warning about this dirty trick, but he said he played along for the full 20-minute "poll."

"The guy was very slick, very personable," Coghlan told the Ticket. "He never fell out of character as a pollster the entire time. He seemed interested in my answers and just kept going through his list of questions as if he was noting my answers. He was very good, very smooth."
For instance, the caller inquired, had Ed watched a recent Democratic debate? Ed said yes. And who did Ed think had won the debate? the pollster inquired.

Coghlan replied, honestly, that he thought Edwards had won because he was calmer and more reasoned didn't get involved in all the petty arguing and finger-pointing like the other two. Now, the pollster said, if Ed knew that most people believed John Edwards could not get elected in a general election, would Ed be more or less likely to vote for him?

South Carolina is a state made imfamous by Robocalls and Push Polls. This year John McCain says he beat them. In 2000, he didn't. As the NY Times reported before the SC primary.

"Volunteers making telephone calls for Senator John McCain in South Carolina last weekend noticed something odd: Four people contacted said in remarkably similar language that they opposed Mr. McCain for president because of his 1980 divorce from his first wife, Carol, who raised the couple’s three children while Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

By Tuesday afternoon, a group calling itself Vietnam Veterans Against McCain had sent out a crude flier accusing the candidate of selling out fellow P.O.W.’s to save himself.

By Tuesday evening, a group called Common Sense Issues, which supports

Mike Huckabee, had begun making what it said were a million automated calls to households in South Carolina telling voters, according to one of the calls, that Mr. McCain “has voted to use unborn babies in medical research.” (The campaign of Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, said it had no connection to the group and had asked it to stop the calls.)

Mr. McCain quickly fired back, but he has seen this movie before. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, one of the most notorious smear campaigns in recent American politics peddled distortions and lies about him, among them that Mr. McCain’s current wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s daughter Bridget, adopted from

Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh, was a black child Mr. McCain had fathered out of wedlock. "

The now-defunct Fred Thompson was cranked by Huckabee-sided Push Polls.

At this point, various recordings of the artificial-intelligence-powered telephone calls are up on the web, and Huckabee's presidential rival Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee, even has a YouTube video of it up on his site as a fund-raising gimmick. In "How to Rig an Election," Raymond recounts how Dick Zimmer, a former Republican congressman from New Jersey, hired political consultants to help him with a bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Rush Holt.

Is all of this just HARDBALL Politics or Dirty Tricks that need to be cleaned up?