Update:
With surprising speed (just look at the dates on the exchange of letters posted here), the AG’s office says that Todd Young’s campaign is not, in fact, making robocalls. The campaign is instead leaving human-dialed recorded messages on answering machines, as I speculated might be the case in a subsequent post, here.

Greg Zoeller, the attorney general, is a good guy and I don’t think that he’d sweep something under the rug (even given his support for Young’s campaign). I therefore consider the matter settled. Trust but verify, don’t make hasty assumptions, etc. Bad politics to be sure, but nothing illegal.

This post will remain (as will the second post) for archival purposes.

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A Hoosierpundit reader sent me an audio clip of a recorded phone call, or robocall, being sent out by Todd Young.

Setting aside the awful mushy-mouthed flat tone of the call (which is bad politics in and of itself) and the glaring fact that Todd never mentions having done any work in the private sector (because he hasn’t), the use of robocalls is a no-no in Indiana politics.

If Todd and his campaign staff had lived in southern Indiana for very long, they would know that recorded phone calls are banned under Indiana law.

The policing of the robocall statute falls under the purview of the Attorney General, in this case Republican Greg Zoeller.

The reader informs me that they have filed a complaint online with the AG’s office.

As a side note, the online reporting form for robocalls is here, if you have also received a robocall on this or anything else and want to report it.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this, as Zoeller is not only one of the statewide elected officials to endorse Todd Young, but someone that has done more fundraisers for him and done more to help his campaign than virtually anyone else that isn’t related to his wife (and thus Dan Quayle).

Greg Zoeller is an upstanding guy and a great attorney general, so I don’t think that the investigation will be swept under the rug.

Zoeller, back in January, got Indiana’s three political parties to sign a treaty agreeing to not use robocalls in the upcoming election cycle (a treaty made necessary by the fact that the litigation of the phone calls takes a long time).

From Zoeller’s website:

Passed in 1988, Indiana’s Auto Dialer law restricts the use of robo-calls — prerecorded messages placed to thousands of phone customers through automated dialing technology. The state law prohibits robo-calls from businesses in most instances. It allows campaigns and political groups to make robo-calls to households only if a live operator first obtains the consumer’s permission, or if the consumer opts in to receiving such calls, typically through an email permission form.

In 2006, then-Attorney General Steve Carter filed lawsuits against two political organizations that had blasted out robo-calls for and against congressional candidates to consumers in Southern Indiana: American Family Voices (AFV) and Economic Freedom Fund (EFF). In 2008, the Indiana Supreme Court gave the attorney general the go-ahead to enforce the Auto-Dialer statute after AFV and EFF had brought legal challenges to the law.

One of the attorney general’s lawsuits was remanded back to the trial court in Harrison County, with Zoeller succeeding Carter as the plaintiff. The other is ongoing in Brown County. Rulings are not expected in time for this year’s elections. To avoid triggering potential Auto-Dialer violations and additional legal action, the voluntary agreement by political parties discourages campaigns from using robo-calls until the issue is ultimately decided by the courts.

It would appear that Todd Young’s campaign may have just violated the treaty that the three parties signed last month, a treaty that was championed by the one statewide elected official that has done more for his campaign and his candidacy than any other.

That’s gratitude for you.

Cross-posted to Hoosier Pundit