Well, I was sitting around my living room on Election Day, totally flummoxed about who to vote for, when the phone rang. A confident, recorded voice solved my problem. “Candidate Smith is a wonderful man who loves puppies and will revitalize Michigan’s economy.
“But candidate Jones leaves his garbage cans lying out all day, and has been seen with women who matriculated at a public university.”
That’s crazy, but my made-up example is actually a tad more elevated than much of what passes for political discourse these days.
Under my government all robocalls would be outlawed for all time ever, and anyone caught placing them would be forced to listen to Nancy Sinatra albums nonstop for at least ninety days.
Those who make money off robocalls will argue that this is a free speech issue. As an opinion-slinging journalist, I have as much invested in free speech as anybody. But I don’t have the right to shout FIRE!! in a crowded theater when there isn’t any fire.
I don’t have the right to try to prevent you from changing stations right now. And I don’t think anyone ought to have the right to invade my home by calling my private phone line to play a recorded message that I did not ask for or solicit.
Last year, a bill limiting robocalls was passed overwhelmingly in the Michigan House, but then died in the Senate, possibly because all the Senate seats were up for election. This year my spies say Michelle McManus’s anti-robocall bill is a cinch to become law.
However, I always worry whenever something sails through any legislative body virtually unopposed. Usually, that means that whatever is being passed does not mean very much. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case with the robocall bill. It only outlaws those calls between 9 p,m. and 9 a.m, meaning they can still get at most of us in prime time.
You will still be at risk of having your dinner interrupted by robocalls, in other words. And they will only have to reveal who paid for the call if they are explicitly telling you for whom to vote.
So I can have a sweet-voiced person call up on behalf of the just-invented “marzipan committee” and say perfectly awful things about Hillary Clinton. And as long as the message doesn’t say for whom to vote, the call doesn’t have to reveal the source of marzipan’s funding.
That doesn’t mean I think Michelle McManus’s bill is a bad idea. It is certainly a start, and it is certainly better than nothing.
The reality, however, is that nothing much is going to change, even after this bill passes. The moral of this story is that you need to take advantage of one of my favorite high-tech inventions, Caller ID.
And let’s keep fighting for a world where the only political robocalls allowed are ones that remind you to go vote.
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