In a Tense Election Year, Push Polls Flourish by Paul Kiel

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In a Tense Election Year, Push Polls Flourish
By Paul Kiel - October 31, 2006, 3:35 PM
Muckraker.com


"In increasingly tight races around the country, voters are receiving telephone "push poll" calls, a classic dirty trick designed to suppress turnout on election day. One calling firm in particular, with White House ties and an impressive ability to fire off millions of automated calls per day, is benefiting from the strategy.

Gabriel Joseph III, president of the robo calling company FreeEats.com, may be the king of the push poll, in which real-sounding questions with ludicrous premises are asked to plant negative ideas in voters' minds. His company, which is better known under its business alias ccAdvertising, has impressive Republican ties: According to a recent piece in Mother Jones, the group has, on at least one occasion, drawn on its White House ties to get business. And its founder, Donald Hodel, is a veteran of the Reagan administration and a former president of Focus on the Family.

As might be expected of an outfit that profits off of convincing people not to vote, ccAdvertising plays rough. Mother Jones reveals that Joseph once boasted of his firm's ability to "deliver a voter suppression message" to unfriendly voters. And as much as Joseph enjoys talking about the reach of his company's technology, he's not above threatening reporters: "If someone writes something that I don't like, I can make their life—I can make them understand a few things if I choose."

How would you know if you received one of the millions of calls ccAdvertising has made on behalf of clients, all Republican, in the past few months? A robo voice might have asked you, "Do you believe that foreign terrorists should have the same legal rights as American citizens?" or told you that your local Democrat "voted to allow the sale of a broad range of violent and sexually explicit materials to minors."

..........SNIP"

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