PUBLISHED 2/28/08 ---

You’ve undoubtedly had this experience: You’re just sitting down to dinner when the president calls. “Can you phone back later, Dubya?” you tell him. “The meatloaf is going to get cold.”

But the president, or the congressman, or the prominent candidate for national office, or whoever it might be, just keeps talking. Because, one, that’s what politicians do, and, two, because this is a robocall — an automated, pre-recorded call intended to personalize, in a highly impersonal way, a political sales pitch.

Political robocalls are exempt from the federal Do Not Call registry. Thankfully, however, there’s now a bill in the U.S. Senate that aims to minimize the aggravation such calls can impose.

Under the “Robocall Privacy Act of 2008,” any party that makes or creates these one-sided, computer-generated calls without observing certain guidelines can be hit with fines of up to $1,000 per violation —or up to $3,000 if those violations are deemed “willful.”

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Arlen Specter, R-Penn., would ban calls after 9 p.m. or before 8 a.m., more than two calls to the same telephone number per day, and the masking of the robocaller’s number or identity on caller ID devices. It would require the caller to disclose the identity of the sponsoring organization or individual, and make clear the call has been pre-recorded.

The rules would be in force only during certain time periods, such as  60 days or less before a general election, and they would not apply to calls from real, live people, calling, for example, from a candidate’s phone bank.

And it would apply only to robocalls from candidates running for federal office, so a governor or assemblyman can still interrupt dinner within existing constraints.

But it’s start — and good news for parents with young children who need naps, elderly folk who might not understand the one-sided nature of such calls, and many others.

We applaud the bill’s sponsors and urge lawmakers representing California to support it. Hang up on robocallers so we don’t have to.