Arizona Now Takes the Lead to Create a Political Do-Not-Call List

Do you ever wonder why you continue to receive automated political telephone calls despite having put your name on both the state and national Do-Not-Call lists? Well the answer is simple – since it’s the politicians making the laws, they have tended to exempt themselves from telemarketing regulations.

To date, the Federal Trade Commission has only governed telemarketing calls that are related to sales. With this said, calls made to your landline on behalf of politicians and charities, as well as calls asking you to participate in most surveys are legal because they aren’t directly selling anything. A survey conducted by Truecaller during the 2012 election reported that 93% of those surveyed didn’t want to receive political campaign calls during future elections.

When it comes to political calls, times may be changing as of lately in favor of consumers. On February 19, 2015, the Senate Judiciary Committee in Arizona unanimously voted to pass a bill to prevent unwanted automated political telephone calls from disturbing Arizona residents. If passed, Arizonians will be able to add their names to a political Do-Not-Call list to prevent future political robocalls from dialing their landlines.

On average the FTC receives 145,000 robocall complaints a month and as we near the next election, this number will only continue to increase if states continue to allow political telemarketing calls regardless if numbers are on DNC lists. Now that Arizona has taken the lead to regulate these types of calls, it will be interesting to see if others follow suit by creating their own political DNC list.