RNCC Bag O' Tricks

I found this after hearing from a coworker who lives in Illinois 6th Congressional district that she was recieving a barrage of phone calls from the Democratic candidate Tammy Duckworth. Apparently, the NRCC has, in several states, paid for automated calls to people that identify that they are calling with information about a democratic candidate, then go into a "smear" of that candidate, followed by the identification of the NRCC. These calls are intended to be annoying and occur at deliberate incovenient times for the recipient. In the case of my coworker, she is a registered Democrat, and is recieving annoying calls from someone she is going to vote for anyway. Seems crazy, huh? I am not a campaigner, but I would certainly not focus on bringing out the vote of someone registered with the party, I would focus on those that could be convinced to vote for the candidate I was supporting.

Whe she has recieved the calls, she has answered the call, discovered it is political in the introduction, and has hung up believing the call is from the Duckworth campaign. She was taken aback when I pointed this issue out to her.

Perhaps the US needs to adopt Canada's approach to limit any campaigning in the 72hrs preceding the election. Then, perhaps these underhanded schemes would give people breathing room before the vote to focus on the issues versus the emotion.