Quote:
Originally Posted by Slava
I'm not sure what to do about the phone calls. I think that the easy answer is no robocalls, but people do hate the actual calls as well. I get the phone calls at my house as well, so I definitely see the annoyance, but then a part of me thinks "its just a phone call".
I also think that as a guy who has employed these for political use, the reality is it works. (Not saying the robocalls here, but specifically the GOTV calls we did yesterday). We can see the correlation between who we call and who shows up. I would also say that people posting in this thread might be surprised how many votes this can be worth. I talked to a lot of people yesterday and a lot of them would say something like "when is the election?".
I guess the phone calls just aren't that big of a deal to me, so I don't see why some people get so upset. Plus, its an election and they're pretty important to me. So if I get more calls than I like I just don't answer or take the call and move along with my day.
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The main thing I disagree with is that the parties and candidates are provided my contact information by Elections Alberta, and I apparently have no say in the matter.
According to Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act, if I give my dry cleaner my name and phone number so they can call me if I forget to pick up my clothes, they can't use that information for marketing purposes without my express permission.
The right to vote is a fundamental right I have as an adult Canadian citizen. To ensure the sanctity of the election process, Elections Alberta collects the contact information for all eligible voters. Then, without any notification, that information is provided to the candidates and parties running in an election.
Whether true or not, my perception is that the politicians crafted the Privacy laws but gave themselves an exemption because they felt that their ability to contact the voters directly was too important.
The fact is, a lot of spammers don't think their message is spam, but it doesn't change the public's thoughts on it.
It would be nice if the registered voters list was provided the same level of privacy protection as a dry cleaner's customer list.
Also, with the technological changes that have occured in recent years, it's much easier to "robo-call" than ever before. As we've heard in the Federal election robocall scandal, all you need is a list of phone numbers, a recorded message, and a credit card to pay for it. It no longer requires a human being physically involved in the process. That has made the whole process a lot easier for the campaigns to use (and abuse).
Plus, I've never really lived in a riding where there was any doubt over who was going to win (although, at the end of the day, it appears this election fell into that same category), so this is the first time I've ever been targetted by such relentless campaigning. Maybe people in other parts of the country are numb to it by now, but I'm not.
I don't have any problem with campaigns calling people who have expressed an interest in supporting the candidate to remind them to vote and offer a ride to the polls. That's a whole other thing than using an externally sourced voters list to spam the voters.