If Barack Obama wins and you don't like the next four years, you can blame it on the BIG CORPORATE MEDIA FOR reporting and emphasizing all negatives about Obama's competition and praising an empty suit, ruthless radical like Barack Obama while shielding any negative complaints about him. You can also blame it on yourself if you were gullible enough to vote for Barack Obama knowing full well he started campaigning for the highest office in the land with no experience. I have absolutely no confidence left in our media. They are all spinners trying to get their favorite candidate elected. Hardly anything they say is factual and non-biased. I will be totally disappointed in the intelligence and good judgment of my fellow citizens if they listen to the empty promises of someone who has done nothing for this country and vote for him in favor of a real life American hero like John McCain. I have already voted and I did not vote for Barack Obama even though I am a democrat, but I am not a stupid partisan who will vote for someone who I think is totally unqualified for the job. I am still hoping John McCain can win tonight even though the media cannot wait to actually count the real votes before they start predicting the presumed winner before the West Coast voting polls have closed. This should be illegal!!!! If it ever comes up for a vote and I will be complaining about it and voicing my opinion to make it become law that these media magpies have to keep their *#*$*%** mouths shut until all the polls close on election day instead of yakking about who is winning before all polls have closed and thus still trying to manipulate the votes. I have already suffered for the past eight years because of my fellow citizens having the poor judgment to vote for George W. Bush. I was hoping people would be smart enough not to listen to empty promises this election. NOBAMA!!!!! NOBAMA!!!!! Even if he wins the election he will not be my president. Barack Obama has already divided the country. I did not like what I saw at my polls today...evidence of a Barack Obama campaign. If Barack Obama does win you people that voted for him are in for a big disappointment. I am already disappointed at the mere possibility that he might win. LOL in the next four years!!! We definitely need campaign finance reform in a big way so that the presidency of the USA is not up for sale to the highest bidder. NOBAMA!!!!! NOBAMA!!!!! now and in the future NOBAMA!!!!!
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Most vendors report that half their calls get picked up by an answering machine, which is good for them in that it counts as a completed call. Of those that get answered by a live person, vendors say that about half of the recipients hang up in the first 10 seconds. "The other 50 percent will listen to the entire message," Stanley says. "The average man who listens will give you 10 seconds; a woman will give you 17 to 18 seconds," says Marty Stone, cofounder of Stones' Phones, a Washington, D.C.-based vendor that works with Democratic campaigns. "Seniors," he says, "will typically give you 30 seconds or more."
But research indicates that whether they're listened to or not, robo-calls have no effect on voting habits. Don Green, a political science professor at Yale, subjected robo-calls to 12 randomized experiments for his 2004 book "Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout." The results, he says, were revealing. "These calls never raise voter turnout. They have no mobilization effect, and no persuasion effect either. What matters is whether they change the probability of voting, and robo-calls have proven they do not."
There is also the possibility of inflicting damage with robo-calls, particularly if they're negative and overused. "You have to be very careful," says John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University who has researched negative politics. "They tend to be very micro-targeted, so you're hopefully going after people who are open to the message you're delivering. But if done too much, they can backfire."
Recently, robo-calls have been subjected to some strict state legislation. About 10 states currently have laws restricting their use. In Washington, the Robocall Privacy Act of 2008 was introduced in February by Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The bill would restrict calls to between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., limit two per household per day and prohibit the masking of callers' phone numbers or identity on caller-ID machines. Anyone in violation would be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per offense.
"Robo-calls are harassment, plain and simple, that's our beef," says Shaun Dakin, CEO and founder of Citizens for Civil Discourse, an anti-political-calls group. Currently, the federal Do Not Call List only applies to commercial calls. "It should apply to political calls, as well," Dakin says. "People should be able to opt out."
Robo call advocates however aren't sweating. They feel that the First Amendment will always protect them. "No one ever said that democracy had to be convenient," says Stanley of PoliticalCalling.com. "It's going to be done in the most cost-effective way out there, and that's what we're here for."
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