An interesting read can be found over at ABC News, where Ex-GOP Consultant Allen Raymond describes the dirty tricks used by political operatives to sway elections.
What’s really disturbing is that most of the techniques used to disrupt elections or smear political rivals are phone-based.
One of the most disturbing practices is described by Raymond as follows:
“Call 8,000 … county committee members at home in the middle of the Super Bowl on behalf of your opponent, enraging all those couch potatoes.”
Ouch! This is shockingly easy to do if you know how to spoof ANI. If your using an Asterisk-based PBX with a VoIP service that supports spoofing, your in business.
I also take issue with one contention made by Raymond regarding the recent spate of calls made to potential primary voters in New Hampshire and Iowa regarding Mitt Romney:
“That was not nickel-and-dime stuff,” says Raymond, explaining that the cost of such an operation narrows the field of suspects. “It couldn’t have come from Huckabee, McCain or Thompson “” they don’t have enough money to pay for that kind of operation.”
Baloney! These kinds of tricks are easy to pull off and extremely cheap. All you need is a little bit of know how, access to a voter registration file and some basic equipment and you can pull off one of these despicable tactics. It is not expensive anymore to initiate an outbound calling campaign to thousands of households.
This ought to be a wake up call (pun intended) to those interested in cleaning up the election process.