GOP “robocall” ads in Nebraska are reportedly using the Democratic candidate’s own voice to harrass voters.
The problem of using automated phone calls to not only call people at all hours but pretend it’s coming from the other side so voters will vote against X candidate is becoming a major scandal.
The Washington Post and The New York Times have reported on it today.
There are several issues involved here. One of the ones not being mentioned in the political scrambling and battling is one of LEGITIMACY. The United States is now living in one of the most polarized era in its history. And you would think that there would be at least a partial recognitition that victories won by tactics such as calling voters to get them mad and pretend it’s coming from the other side means that if a side wins because of that it will have (a) further polarized the country (b) undermined the very BASIS for American democracy, which is that after an election Americans accept the verdict as part of a fight well fought and life goes on.
But news stories such as the above show that there are almost NO rules of the game anymore. And, yes, American history has documented stories of hanky-panky, ballot box stuffing, talk of stolen votes in states that edged a candidate over the top.
But those were during times less polarized than this one — and times when we didn’t have a 24 hour news cycle with instantaneous news delivered on weblogs, cell phones, cable news networks.
The worst part: there are seemingly no consequences because, when a side wins, that’s all that seems to matter. The idea of honest, unfettered democracy — which the U.S. says it wants to export — gets lost in the shuffle.
UPDATE: And his sleazy tactic does work.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.