Something, something Robocalls

This morning I read a very underwhelming column on the developing robocall scandal by the Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson.  Not only does the column include the questionable claim "As a general rule, politicians never openly lie, because the consequences of being caught in one just aren’t worth it," but it also seems to back much of the official Conservative position on the Robocall Scandal somewhat uncritically.


One of the claims of the Conservative party that seems to have been accepted whole-heartedly is that

people who have worked at senior levels on election campaigns, but who prefer not to be identified, say that voter suppression tactics are stupid because they’re inefficient. It is more profitable on election day to mobilize your vote than to try to discourage your opponent’s.

What evidence do these unnamed campaign workers or Mr. Ibbitson have to support this position?  My gut feeling was that it was at least plausible that voter suppression could be very effective in some circumstances - and particularly in circumstances that were not all that dissimilar from those associated with the current Robocall Scandal.

A little time online lead me to a few neat articles about robocalling and voter suppression.  One that dealt more with the regulation of robocalling in the US does detail a few of the ways in which robocalls have been used both legitimately and illegitimately.  I was particularly amused by the following quote, which is quite pertinent to the Super PAC-era politics currently ongoing in the US:

The NRCC spent almost $20,000 to pour hundreds of thousands of robocalls into the district in New Hampshire. Because the calls were independent expenditures, they could not be coordinated with nor ap- proved of by the incumbent Republican candidate. Even after Congressman Bass asked for the calls to stop, the party committee refused, saying that cessation would require illegal coordination.

Another article more explicitly on voter suppression through the distribution of misinformation found that such tactics could suppress voter participation, particularly among those segments of a population with limited political knowledge/education.  Though these findings are preliminary,  they do hint at the potential effectiveness of a widespread campaign of misinformation.

I am not trying to lay the blame for the Robocall Scandal at the feet of any particular entity or absolve other groups, but trying to suggest that when we hear claims about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of things like voter suppression campaigns that we try to assess the validity of these claims before accepting or rejecting them.  In some cases the validity or inaccuracy of such claims can change the way the whole situation is perceived.