This in from Towleroad:

Republicans have reached hundreds of thousands of homes in six states using telemarketing 'robo-calls' that reportedly deceive the listener into thinking they're being bothered at home by a Democrat, but then turn out to be a negative campaign push from the Republican candidate. If the listener hangs up, they are repeatedly called back by the phone-bot until they've listened to the entire message.

Via AmericaBlog: "The messages start like they are going are from the Democratic candidate 'I have a message from....' but then turn in to a negative call. However, [listeners] are only hearing the first part of the message, thinking that it is the Democrat. If [listeners] hang up, they're called back again, and again, and again. End result? The Democratic [listeners] are so ticked off at the Democrat harassing them that they don't vote, or vote for the Republican - without realizing they've just been tricked."

I don't know about you, but I've gotten plenty of pre-recorded political messages this past weekend. Ditto glossy snail mail campaign pamphlets and post cards. None of them mattered. The snail mail got tossed in the recycle pile with the other junk mail. I hung up on the pre-recorded calls, or deleted them from voice mail as soon as I realized what they were.

It's not that I don't care about politics, nor that I have no opinions of my own. In fact I formed my opinions before the primaries about who I was going to vote for, and nothing since has changed my mind. I'm not a wishy-washy "undecided" who might be persuaded by such last minute tactics. And I don't need any party wasting money urging me to get off my duff and go vote. The only votes I've ever missed since registering as a high school senior, even before I turned 18 were a couple of special school referenda over the years that weren't even tacked onto township committee elections.

Even at the train station this morning, candidates and their volunteers were all over me, trying to stuff pens and pamplets in my face. Sorry guys--I live/vote in the next town/county over, two miles away, so even if I worshipped you, I couldn't vote for you. Thank you, but no thank you.

At Hoboken this evening, we had to wait for an entire Bob Menendez parade to evacuate track 12 before we could get to track 11 to our train. What was the track difference? Track 12 had a Bergen County train. Track 11 had a Morris County train. You do the math on that one. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Menedez has basically figured he can win Bergen but not Morris. That may well be true. Still, these "meet and greets" should be opportunities for the voter to meet the candidate or pick up literature, not convoys that disrupt the flow of normal traffic.

I'm not sure that I belive these robo-bot calls are real. It sounds awfully hokey to me, but even if they did happen, it says an awful lot about the person(s) who would claim that Democratic voters are so dimwitted that they'd be fooled by such tactics, especially if forced to listen to the entire thing. If they did listen to the entire thing, it'd be obvious that it was a hoax, and not the democratic candidate.

The folks at Towleroad and AmericaBlog have pretty much stated for the record here that they think Republican dirty tricks will be responsible if the Democrats lose. Oh, ye of little faith. Don't belittle your fellow voters. It's insulting.