There’s a certain temptation to forget about an election cycle once it’s over, and begin to focus attention on the immediate future. That’s particularly true when your side wins — whatever the other side was up to doesn’t matter as much, because they lost.<\/p>\n
But looking back at some of the GOP’s tactics in the weeks immediately preceding Nov. 7, the unethical and blatantly dishonest schemes, successful or not, still leave a bitter taste. What’s more, because the media largely ignored nearly all of the most underhanded of the Republicans’ machinations, we’re poised to see the tactics refined, “perfected,” and brought back two years from now. That’s pretty much how the GOP operates — if there’s no political cost, keep it up.<\/p>\n
That is, unless laws are rewritten to prevent abuses<\/a> such as the ones we saw this year.<\/p>\n Following allegations of automated phone calls and targeted mail discouraging minorities from voting in the run-up to the 2006 midterms, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) proposed legislation that would impose harsh penalties on violators Thursday.<\/p>\n “Too often, we hear reports of mysterious phone calls and mailers … that seek to mislead and threaten voters to keep them from the polls,” Obama said in a statement. “These deceptive and underhanded campaign tactics usually target voters living in minority or low-income neighborhoods.”<\/p>\n Obama’s bill, the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, would criminalize robo-calls and direct mail that mislead potential voters about the location or time of a federal election, voter eligibility or a candidate’s political party. Also made punishable by the bill would be any call that promotes, attacks, supports or opposes a clearly identifiable candidate and does not properly identify the call’s originator.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Obama’s bill would punish violators with up to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine.<\/p>\n Indeed, states are sick of these tactics, too. [Y]ou can add Virginia and Pennsylvania to the list, and likely Connecticut. In Virginia, state Delegate Bob Brink (D-Arlington) has announced that he will introduce legislation outlawing robo calls in the state.<\/p>\n In Pennsylvania, where a barrage<\/a> of robo calls targeted Dem Lois Murhpy in the state’s 6th District, state Rep. Mike McGeehan, D-Phila., says that he will announce the introduction of a bill next week that would add political robo calls to those covered by the state’s “Do Not Call” Act.<\/p>\n And in Connecticut, where the state GOP sent out robo calls prior to the election promising to end robo calls<\/a>, a number of legislators have been reported<\/a> to be interested in an anti-robo call bill. […]<\/p>\n You can add Florida<\/a> (the bill would add political calls to the state’s Do Not Call list) and Wisconsin<\/a> (the bill would ban all automated calls) to the list.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In this sense, Republicans really had an impact this year, didn’t they?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s a certain temptation to forget about an election cycle once it’s over, and begin to focus attention on the immediate future. That’s particularly true when your side wins — whatever the other side was up to doesn’t matter as much, because they lost. But looking back at some of the GOP’s tactics in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nPaul Kiel noted<\/a> that the attorney general in Missouri has introduced legislation to ban automated political calls, and other states are following suit.<\/p>\n