Let’s Charge Politicians for Wasting Our Time

VIRGINIA POSTREL

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There’s an election today here in California, and that means my landline at home is ringing constantly with robocalls from assorted public figures whose recorded voices urge me to get out and vote for their favorite candidates. One called the other day while I was conducting an interview on the mobile phone I use for most purposes. I didn’t answer, but it interrupted the flow of the conversation. Yesterday I picked up the receiver to find five voice mails, all from recorded political voices (including two identical messages from the same sheriff candidate).

Our phone number is on the National Do Not Call Registry, but those rules for telemarketers don’t apply to political campaigns. The folks who make the laws aren’t about to do away with a technique that works.

Political robocalls are illegal to mobile phones but OK to most landlines, as long as they meet disclosure requirements. Everyone I know hates such calls, and even political consultants know they’re a problem. “Some voters get turned off by too many robocalls,” cautions a political-strategy website. The cumulative annoyance, it warns, means that voters may resent yours even if they’re rare. Yep.

Recorded, automatically dialed messages arguably constitute a legitimate and potentially important form of political speech. If I weren’t so annoyed, I might actually like to know who’s endorsing whom for sheriff. But it’s ridiculous that the only way to limit the onslaught is to pay someone $24.99 to tell organizations, who may or may not listen, that I don’t want them bothering me.

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Here’s a better idea: You should be able to set a charge for calling you. Every number that isn’t on your “free” list would automatically be assessed a fee. The phone company would get a percentage of the revenue, and you’d be able to adjust the fee to different levels at different times of the day or for different seasons. (The nearer the election, the higher I’d make my charge.) If candidates really think it’s valuable to call me, they should be willing to pay. Otherwise, they’re just forcing me to subsidize their political efforts with my time and attention.

Technology investor Esther Dyson has for years been pushing a similar idea for e-mail. Unsolicited phone calls are much more annoying, and the technological challenges of “reversing the charges” should be much easier. Although you can’t track down the true scamsters who break the do-not-call law and peddle fraudulent schemes from phony numbers, the politicians and charities that pester us for support aren’t trying to hide. They’re just trying to get something scarce and precious — our time and attention — for free.

Virginia Postrel posted this column on the Bloomberg View on June 3, 2014. She has also written for Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Atlantic.