The red elephant soft touch robo-caller of Ohio

Created in Cleveland, Victory VOIP is currently making automated phone calls for Republican presidential John McCain and dozens of other campaigns in 16 states.

The automated phone system combines automatic dialing, automated bookkeeping, and a message-drop feature for a volunteer to deliver a personalized message that can be left on an answering machine if nobody picks up the phone.

Volunteers don't have to deal with paper and pencil to keep track of who they have called and who they need to call; a VoIP system handles it all automatically. In case of an answer machine pickup, the system leaves the pre-recorded message while dialing up another line. If a real person does pick up, the volunteer can go through his/her pitch.

According to CEO Shannon Burns, using the hybrid automated system "nearly triples" the call output of a traditional volunteer phone bank. The technology is being used for House Minority Leader John Boehner's re-election campaign and was applied in several campaigns across Ohio.

VoIP is being increasingly incorporated into elections and political lobbying. Google tapped into Cause Caller to lobby on behalf of Google's White Spaces push. On the blue donkey side of the aisle, David Troy's Popvox [1] has been working with various Democratic political causes since 2005. During the 2006 election cycle, Popvox logged over a million voter-to-voter phone calls for 25 Democratic campaigns

For more:
- Akron Beacon Journal/ohio.com covers Red Elephant Robo Calling. Article [2]