Save us from the robots

As the election draws nearer, any eligible voter has felt the barrage of messages, questionnaires and calls for donations. But these calls aren’t being made just by pesky campaign workers, but also by our robotic brethren in the form of spam programs.

Like John Connor battled the terminators to save us from a world overrun by Arnold Schwarzenegger, we eligible voters have to find a way to overcome this robo-menace.

Robocalls – phone programs that send automated messages – are being abused by both political parties to spread their messages with varying degrees of truth and propaganda.

Indiana is one of three states that has banned this practice completely, but is a hard law to enforce because voters often don’t know that it’s against the law and don’t report it.

Free speech shouldn’t apply to automatic messages such as these if they invade privacy and force themselves on the listener. It’s not free speech if someone takes a pamphlet, ties it to a brick and throws it through your window. Why should robocalls be considered different?

This is dangerous because anyone can now have their own little auto-call monster with a computer, simple software and as little as five cents per call. There’s something to be said to politicians who can’t take the time to relay their message themselves: It’s probably not really worth it.

Robocalls shouldn’t be outlawed entirely but restricted so you don’t get a call at 4 a.m. from a machine telling you about how Hillary Clinton wants to kill an opponent’s cat or how McCain’s own robocalls are annoying. Yes, we see the irony in that statement, but apparently the campaigns don’t.

The candidates need to realize both the inefficiency of this model and the danger it poses toward driving away potential voters. Spam e-mails work similarly: Send out millions of messages in the hope that a few click on the link provided.

Those already decided on their candidate are confident enough in their choice that a mild annoyance won’t change their minds, but continual abuse of this technique could potentially drive away undecided voters about whom to choose. To use a marketing idea, not all press is good press.