Proposal Essay Outline
Reason: Because election season attempts to contact voters by political campaigns from tend to be disruptive, time consuming and, wasteful of resources
Claim: automated political campaign calls to the private, home landline phones of citizens should be limited by a silent screening technology.
Warrant: Nobody like to be bothered after a hard day’s work or on the weekend by numerous phone calls that are just recorded messages from politicians that can accomplish they result using less intrusive methods.
A person’s home is their castle, which means they have the right to not be disturbed in their home from automated telephone calls from politicians that they may have no interest in contacting. Automated phones are disruptive because one either has to pick up the phone to learn who is calling, listen to voicemail messages to make sure there is not one of importance, or simply have to endure a ringing or buzzing phone.
These disruptions can become even more annoying when it draws a listener from another activity such as a meal, conversation, or work; or when it leads to further disruptions such as the waking of a sleeping baby.
Since most phones now have digital functionality, digital application can be created that, when enabled, allows the phone to automatically recognize where the phone call is coming from and block it. In order for this application to work, campaign would have to register the phone numbers that they plan to use in making campaign calls to a central database that the app, if downloaded, will have access to. The app will be able to update its block list by constantly checking its list with the numbers in the database.
In order to facilitate the development of this app, concerned citizens should lobby their legislators for the creation of a digital database of campaign phone call numbers. In addition, they should lobby on the benefits of developing such a digital application.
