Live Call Shortage - Is it possible?

Senate Democratic leaders say they'll push legislation this year to make it a federal crime, punishable by fines and jail time, to use automated "robo calls" and other tactics to mislead and discourage voters.

Civil rights and watchdog groups say some voters complained last year of being barraged by automated recorded campaign calls. Though many were only annoying, some gave misleading information, directing voters to the wrong polling site or raising questions about whether a voter was registered.

Many states have adopted "Do Not Call" laws that prevent marketers from calling consumers who put their names on government-run lists. But automated calls from politicians and pollsters have been exempt from these laws, as you may have noticed during the last election.

In response to this proliferation, a proposal to stop these "robo-calls" is making its way through most state legislation in conjunction with the federal legislation.
So with the possibility for increased legislation and auto call restrictions , on top of the 2008 presidential elections already beginning to have an effect on the market sooner than ever in the history of campaigning, will there be an overall shortage of live calling capacity nationwide when the time comes and it really matters?

There are only a handful of “big players” on both the Republican and Democratic sides, and even those organizations are no where close to being staffed to capacity needs I predict for the current live calling patterns, let alone to make up for any volume shifts from the current auto calling budgets to live work Not to mention that most automated calling was used in a way to either 1) Get a simple message of “Get out to vote”. With an autodialer and an automated message, you could do hundreds of thousands of calls in a very short period of time. Now with making those requirements of having to have live calling, you are talking about the same amount of calling taking days and weeks to accomplish.

One could look at this as a possible boom for the Telemarketing Industry. As hiring live agents, for a longer period of time, will allow most call centers to hire more people and work almost indefinately during campaign time. But there is the infrastructure aspect that requires the hiring, and training of hundreds of agents between now and then – with then being “now”, to have them ready for when the political telemarketing giant really wakes up and starts its rampage across American Phone lines this fall, in preparation of the primaries.