Do not call registry- a partial failure

Like many Americans, I have been receiving many calls from political candidates, most of them local to my area (southern New Mexico). I quickly went to the National Do Not Call Registry (link), and verified that my number was indeed on the list, which it has been since the creation of the list. I re-registered just in case. Shortly after I did this, I received a call from a political polling agency. I don't have the name of the agency, but I can tell you that they were polling about a local candidate. I informed them that they were in violation of United States Law (they weren't, see below) as my number was on the do not call list (it is).

I usually tell people calling for political candidates that I am giving them a final warning that they should not call, and if they call again, I will never vote for their candidate (may or may not be true- depends on the candidate). However, this doesn't work for tele-surveying agencies.

Anyway, I was disappointed to find out that being on the DNC list doesn't prevent people calling you with unsolicited political messages. Beyond that, the list doesn't prevent telephone surveyors from calling. This really disappoints, but does not surprise me, as we really can't expect today's politicians from (essentially) self-regulating their own telemarketing activities.

While researching this, I stumbled on an interesting page looking at political messages and the claim that John McCain "invented" it. Summary- he didn't.

Just for reference, here are the"violators" of my no-call policy:

Tom Udall for US Senate campaign
(866) 849-3243
(800) 222-2222 (forged caller ID)
(505) 319-6506