Prospect of relief from calls another empty campaign promise

In the week leading up to the Nevada caucuses, my home phone rang constantly.

One evening, while I was busy, I let the answering machine pick up. Then I asked my son who had called.

"Hillary Clinton," he said nonchalantly. "Again."

For many Nevada voters, the caucuses brought constant surveys, notices of candidate events and pleas to attend the Jan. 19 events. The calls came in so frequently that many voters walked away with their heads still ringing from all the interruptions of their evenings.

As a political columnist, I loved every call because it helped me see how each of the campaigns were trying to sway voters. In the final days before the caucuses, even Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich were on the other end of the auto-dialer.

But after the morning of Jan. 19, the phone's silence was another reminder that it was all over.

From what I can tell, that silence was the golden part of the caucuses for many voters.

"It was just sickening, all the calls," said Margaret Stellar, a 72-year-old who moved here from California last year. "It was almost to the point where I'd scream at the recording as if somehow they could hear me."

On the morning of the caucus, several voters at Cimarron-Memorial High School arrived not knowing their precinct numbers.

"They just kept calling and telling me to come here," one woman barked on her way to the cafeteria to search her information in the database.

Neither that woman nor Stellar sat out the state's first caucuses, even though both complained loudly about the calls.

The calls are a lot like negative campaign advertising. Voters say they dislike them and are turned off by candidates who use them.

But they sure do work. Ask Nevada Rep. Jon Porter. He narrowly escaped the 2006 Democratic congressional tide thanks, in part, to some very nasty stuff he put on the air.

And it doesn't appear as though voters flock to the candidates who stay clean or don't have the budget to mix it up. Rudy Giuliani gave his Florida swan song speech crediting his campaign for staying clean. Yet John McCain and Mitt Romney, who were swinging hard at each other, still came in first and second.

In Nevada, the constant calls might have made people wish for an evening's peace, but those voters, in large numbers, did participate.

There's a reason Republican turnout hit 44,000 despite a less-than-cohesive effort by the state GOP to bring out their voters. Romney's machine, his mail, his calls, and certainly, his appearances, got it done.

Democratic turnout hit nearly 118,000 precisely because Barack Obama and Clinton battled intensely for undecided voters.

I've heard plenty of complaints about the disorganization on caucus day, but just as many gripes about the calls.

The national Do Not Call registry must really have spoiled us. And it's made the public so unaccustomed to evening calls from outsiders that the complaints keep echoing as loud as the rings that ended Jan. 19.

Secretary of State Ross Miller, just a year into office, is already trying to carve out a legacy to help him switch offices in the Capitol. Maybe that's why he was so quick to announce a "Please Don't Call" registry for political solicitations.

This isn't Do Not Call, mind you, just Please Don't.

And it's precisely the kind of feel-good, do-nothing program officials trot out at the first sign of a grumble.

"I'm hearing from a lot of frustrated voters who are tired of having their lives interrupted by campaign calls," Miller said when launching the list last week. "This list is called 'voluntary' because it's ultimately up to the campaigns to voluntarily honor the voter's expressed preference."

Miller actually says, with a straight face, candidates are going to honor a please-don't-call list. Sen. Clinton couldn't even stay true to the Democratic Party's early-state pledge, actively campaigning in the mutinous Michigan and Florida primaries. Those states lost delegates for trying to move up the calendar, but Sen. Clinton is actively working to get those delegates to count anyway.

I can just imagine how this will play out in the fall when Nevada again is one of the nation's closest battlegrounds.

Miller will send a letter to both the Democratic and Republican nominees, asking them again not to phone those on the list.

Of course, he'll fire off that letter to the press, and dutiful political reporters will chase down the campaigns for response. Each will offer a combination of "We didn't know about it" and "We're sorry we bothered someone, but not all our volunteers had access to the list."

Miller has to know none of the campaigns is going to take this list seriously. Nevada's past four presidential elections were very close, and there's no indication the state has turned wildly to the right or left.

And in any close election (21,500 votes separated President Bush from John Kerry in Nevada in 2004), turnout is going to be the key to victory. The best way to turn out voters is the phone bank.

Miller deserves credit for establishing a Web site that allows voters to verify their registration, check their voting history and look up where to vote. But now he's giving voters the option of checking a "Please Don't Call" box when they look up their information.

The Web site is www.silverstate08.com if you're interested.

But there was this little thing called the First Amendment that kept political calls off limits to the original national Do Not Call Registry. It's important that voters can get certain information, particularly in the midst of a campaign.

So while Miller can clearly read the mood of some of his more vocal constituents, his registry has no teeth and no business giving voters the perception that it will keep the callers away.

One of my favorite moments of the early presidential campaign thus far came on the night of the Iowa caucuses, just after several news organizations called it for Obama. The Obama campaign sent an e-mail telling me to turn on the TV because the candidate was about to give a speech.

Maybe Miller can add a "Please Don't Text" box to his Web site. And while he's at it, maybe he can get the Nigerian e-mail scammers out of my in box, too.

Contact Erin Neff at (702) 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.