Sick of robots calling you up to waste your time to tell you why you should vote for Senator Porcine?
A group of young environmentalists is helping voters turn the tables on politicians.
The Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) has set up a website that allows voters to deliver an automated telephone message to their local federal MP.
The messages, known as robocalls, are more commonly associated with presidential campaigns in the United States.
I don't suppose it calls their home phones? Or their mobiles? At three in the morning?
Vivien Kellems would likely approve.
In the 1970s, Connecticut Republican governor Thomas Meskill made a back-room deal with the Democrats that he would sign a state income tax into law if they would give him some other things he wanted. On the last day of the session, the legislature, dominated by the Democrats, passed the income tax and Meskill signed it. Kellems, already disenchanted with the federal income tax, went into high gear. She started calling people, who called people, etc. And they called their state legislators. At 3:00 AM. (Recall, this was before caller ID and before answering machines became ubiquitous.) They snail mailed their legislators used teabags.
Gov. Meskill called an emergency session of the legislature, and they repealed the state income tax. Thanks to Vivien Kellems, her tea bags and her phone calls. To add ignominy to insult, Meskill did not seek the Republican nomination for re-election because of the income tax and the back room deal that brought it in. Meskill later admitted that the income tax was the greatest political mistake of his career.