Hello! This is your congressman speaking!
Tele-Town Halls Cross Ethical Lines
by Coleen Rowley and Peter Smith
One of these evenings, your phone is going to ring at suppertime. You're going to answer it, and there, (after a brief pause), will be your congressional representative.
Not a recorded message. The real thing. In the flesh. In real time and fine form, in a town hall meeting format, holding forth on the issues of the day for you and hundreds or even thousands of other constituents.
If you like, you'll even be able to join a queue of questioners, and maybe, (if your representative likes the look of your area code and address, and any other information about you that shows up on the screen), you'll be able to actually question the Great Oz him or herself.
The technology — a combination of robo-calling and voice-over-internet protocol telephony — was introduced just before the 2006 elections. Already more than 50 representatives and senators (primarily Republicans) are using it. More are signing up all the time.
At first blush, the benefits for those at the D.C. end of the line seem both benign and obvious. These "Tele Town Hall Meetings" save the time and expense of traveling to remote corners of the district to stay in touch with constituents. There is no real flesh to press — and no rubber chicken dinner to endure. Where, it might be impossible to get 100 people to a real town hall meeting on a Tuesday night in November, a Tele Town Hall Meeting can aggregate thousands of listeners — and "fine tune" the audience to make sure it shares the representative's views on the issues. If the representative wishes, everyone on the call can be pre-screened to be very happy.
(More here.)
by Coleen Rowley and Peter Smith
One of these evenings, your phone is going to ring at suppertime. You're going to answer it, and there, (after a brief pause), will be your congressional representative.
Not a recorded message. The real thing. In the flesh. In real time and fine form, in a town hall meeting format, holding forth on the issues of the day for you and hundreds or even thousands of other constituents.
If you like, you'll even be able to join a queue of questioners, and maybe, (if your representative likes the look of your area code and address, and any other information about you that shows up on the screen), you'll be able to actually question the Great Oz him or herself.
The technology — a combination of robo-calling and voice-over-internet protocol telephony — was introduced just before the 2006 elections. Already more than 50 representatives and senators (primarily Republicans) are using it. More are signing up all the time.
At first blush, the benefits for those at the D.C. end of the line seem both benign and obvious. These "Tele Town Hall Meetings" save the time and expense of traveling to remote corners of the district to stay in touch with constituents. There is no real flesh to press — and no rubber chicken dinner to endure. Where, it might be impossible to get 100 people to a real town hall meeting on a Tuesday night in November, a Tele Town Hall Meeting can aggregate thousands of listeners — and "fine tune" the audience to make sure it shares the representative's views on the issues. If the representative wishes, everyone on the call can be pre-screened to be very happy.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Gil Gutknecht held one of these Tele-Town Hall meetings. I received a call offering me the chance to participate … unfortunately I did not pick-up the message until after the teleconference was over. I believe that Gutknecht stated that he had to work this Tele-Town Hall meeting while the House was in session and that they would be prohibited from participating in similar meetings since the election was getting close ( the 90 day window before Election Day). So Gil may have been trying to play by the rules that he thought were in effect … that doesn’t mean that the opinion may be different by other Congressmen … heck, if an attorney can tell us that waterboarding isn’t torture, I sure that they would advise that this practice was A-OK.
Here is a link to one participants experience with Gutknecht’s meeting.
http://www.mankatofreepress.com/archivesearch/local_story_172113843.html
That aside, is there any doubt that they would hold a selective teleconference with identified likely supporters? The only difference is that they would have to pay for the call instead of as part of the Franking budget.
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