Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Presidential Fakeout Robocalls

When I got home today there was a voicemail message waiting.   It was a robocall asking me to sign an online petition in favor of Hillary Clinton running for president  in 2012.   Politco has a short article about these calls, apparently going out in other states as well ("Robocalling Hillary 2012," by Emily Schulteheis, 12/19); it also provides a transcript of the robocall.  What struck me about it was the absence of an accountability statement ( ... this call paid for by ....).  I thought all of those calls had to have that.

The call refers to a website which is also lacking any information on who put it together or who paid for it.  I checked a standard domain registry and found the www.runhillary2012.net domain is registered to Domains by Proxy. 

My theory is that the site is set up by someone other than a Hillary Clinton supporter.  The site asks people to leave name, address, etc., so it may be a standard list building site.  Even so, there should be some sort of ownership statement on it.

2 comments:

Ron said...

FWIW, Domains By Proxy is GoDaddy's Private Domain Registration service that lets you keep your whois record private. It looks like the site is hosted at Weebly. But none of that really helps figure out who is responsible. I checked their whois history and they didn't make the mistake of registering with their real info and then subscribing to Private Domain Registration.

Are there any election laws that would require a site like this to identify who they are? If so we could contact Weebly and Domains by Proxy and file a complaint.

AboveAvgJane said...

Ron,

Thanks for the info.

No organized group is taking credit for the website. If it is one person or an unincorporated group I'm not sure election laws apply. But the whole situation is beyond my grasp of campaign finance regulation.