To be more fair, Merriam Webster is out of date.
The modern definition of junk mail is best defined as;
Unsolicited mail, email, fax or phone calls for the purpose of generating sales, support, contributions or marketing information.
Your reliance on mail class and addressing scheme is disingenuous in the face of modern computers, databases and mailing machines.
It was junk mail. Bristle all you want.
I recently signed a petition against Dubya's war. I asked them to NOT put me on the mailing list. Guess what! I got mail from them. It went right into my circular file with the other pound of crap I get each day. It was junk mail.
Those flyers on my car? Junk mail.
I will defend the legal right of political campaigns to do this - political speech must be protected. But I WILL protect my privacy. If it invades my home, my phone or my email box and its unwanted it IS Junk Mail.
Robert Schmid
Central Neighborhood
On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 11:17 AM, Terrell Brown wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Joseph Barisonzi As someone who believes strongly in the political process and still idealistically believes in the importance of political speech, my neck has bristled every time I saw the subject line that read "Re: [Mpls] Controversial junk mail (not from Don or Olin, from the MPS)"Being a geek, I checked the definition of "junk mail". According to Merriam Webster: Main Entry: junk mail Function: noun Date: 1954 : third-class mail (as advertising circulars) that is often addressed to "occupant" or "resident" Now I can't speak for Olin's political mailings. I do know that Don Samuels campaign sent 5 pieces of mail over a five week period. Each was sent first class presort and was addressed to a specific resident at a specific address. By definition it was not junk mail. ... <snip> Over the next month Don's campaign would like to make our case to the voters of the Third Ward why we believe that Don is the best choice to be the next councilmember. It would thrill me to find a way to do this that did not result in accusations and attacks of flooding mailboxes or making unwanted phone calls - and resulted in "view rates" equal to mail or "contact rates" equal to the phone. Suggestions? [TB] I recall hearing at a campaign management class a few years ago that for a candidate to be successful s/he needed to get his or her name in front of a voter 7 times. In this case the election was to a certain extent unexpected and many of the candidates didn't have high levels of name recognition. It was also a rather long ballot with, what, 20 names. And, oh by the way, the election did not get a whole lot of media attention. So how is a candidate expected to introduce himself to the voters? Probably can't door knock the entire 3rd Ward in a month (or less). You certainly don't tell much about yourself on a lawn sign or billboard. Television (even radio) advertising is expensive and especially when you are paying to send it well beyond your target audience. That leaves neighborhood newspapers and direct mail. With direct mail I can use a voter list which should be rather up to date since there was an election only a couple of months ago. If I were the candidate or campaign manager, I'd be mailing as much as I could afford. I'd try to mail to likely voters if I could identify them, but I'd mail as much as I could afford. The candidate's job is to introduce him/herself to voters, direct mail is part of that job. I think that those who object to a candidate's use of direct mail are doing so because they support another candidate. An informed voter should appreciate all the information they can get. Terrell Brown Loring Park terrell at terrellbrown dot org
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