Candidate Ads, Coming Soon To An Inbox Near You

ooby writes "MSNBC reports that Bush and Kerry plan to shoot off a million or so emails to their closest friends. By using the Internet to distribute ads, presidential candidates believe they can reach more people using less money. I guess that's why they wrote that loophole in that awesome new spam law."

Comments

Caucuses and Spammaries

[corby]

I gave to a Presidential campaign during the 2000 cycle. Over the next few months, I was deluged with snail mail and phone calls begging me for more money. I found it very frustrating and invasive. This year, I tried to give to a candidate's campaign through his website, but the process required me to provide an e-mail address that was verifiably mine. I did not complete the donation.

I will give to a Presidential campaign that I support when I can check a box that says, 'Do not spam or harass me.' (Or when I can provide darl@sco.com as my e-mail address) But not before then, I'm afraid.

Re:Caucuses and Spammaries

[rongage]

Come on dude, this is SOOO easy to deal with....

• adduser tempusername
• use tempusername@domain.com as your email address
• wait for confirmation email to come in
• userdel -r tempusername
• let the idiots spam away at a non-existant address
• ???
• Profit.... (sorry, couldn't resist)

Re:OT: Political culture

[gcaseye6677]

Dean's support being eroded by the scream is a myth. He never really had all that much support. Remember the scream came AFTER losing the Iowa primary by quite a lot of votes. Dean made a lot of money early on, but pretty soon all the people who were going to donate money on the internet had donated already. His actual numbers were pretty low, in spite of media hype. Its not surprising, considering Dean has the opposite position of the average American on just about every political issue.

Re:OT: Political culture

[UserGoogol]

No, we're going to always have a 2 party system because we use "First past the post." The spoiler effect is too damned strong there. Third party candidates tend to help the party of the big two that it resembles least.

Although maybe if the Libertarians and the Greens could manage to take votes from the Democats and Republicans equally, third parties might be able to rise in power. (Although there are probably quite a few more Democratic-Libertarians than there are Republican-Greens.)

Now, if we used "Instant Runoff Voting" or "Approval Voting," this problem wouldn't be as big a deal.

Re:Oh please...

[Motherfucking Shit]

Federal elected officials get unlimited free (pronounced "payed for by taxes") postage, so you're paying for the paper junk mail too.

You're referring to the franking privilege, but your interpretation is overly broad. Postage is provided free of charge for official business only, with restrictions, and campaign mailings do not qualify. There are more severe restrictions placed upon franked mailings during election years, and nearly any franked mailing within 60 days of any election in which the sender is a candidate is totally prohibited unless it's clearly official business, to cut down on "shadow" campaign mailings.

There are some exceptions. A lot of people know the factoid about Jackie Kennedy having free use of the USPS for the remainder of her life, but few realize that all first ladies have that privilege. So do all former Presidents. There are restrictions here too; oddly enough, the franking privilege for ex-Presidents and ex-First Ladies is only good for personal mail. Go figure, they have to pay for their personal postage while they're in power, but they get it free forever after that!

You can see some of the regulations in the USPS Domestic Mail Manual, S E050. The 60 day rule regarding elections and franked mailings is not mentioned here but I'm certain of it.

Full disclosure: I spent 5 years working for a commercial mail receiving agency (CMRA) and I mostly knew the DMM inside and out. That was 5 years ago, and things have certainly changed, but I was able to find the franked mail guidelines easily enough in the current DMM.