Update: Tucson City Clerk issues cease and desist letter in ‘SpamGate’

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Tucson City Clerk has issued a cease and desist letter to "Rio Nuevo" Rick Grinnell for unlawful spamming of city employees' e-mail accounts soliciting campaign contributions in "SpamGate." Campaigns warned about email soliciting City of Tucson employees:

Political candidates who solicit city employees for donations on their official government electronic mail accounts could be prosecuted for a criminal misdemeanor, the City Clerk's Office warned Tuesday in a memo to all political campaigns.

The update was sent after the office received a complaint from Democrats about an email from Republican mayoral candidate Rick Grinnell that went to some city employees during work hours last week.

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The Grinnell email follows one earlier in the summer by Republican City Council candidate Tyler Vogt, who made a public-records request for the names of those getting city information from council offices. Afterward, he then sent an email blast to 9,000 people on the list, and Democrats complained he was violating the City Charter. Vogt ended up scrubbing the list of all official city addresses.

The charter, noted clerk Roger Randolph, not only bans any solicitation of employees during work hours, but also prohibits city employees from giving money to elected officials in the city. He said this is the first year he can recall the issue cropping up with such consistency.

Randolph said he sent the Grinnell campaign a cease-and-desist letter, then followed up with the update for all the campaigns.

[Randolph said] he felt he had to issue a strict warning so it doesn't happen again. "It's beyond our patience at this point."

That's all well and good, but what about those of us who are not city employees who are being spammed by these Tea-Publican trolls? I did not voluntarily sign up to receive Tyler Vogt e-mail messages, and his lame excuse that one can "opt-out" is bullshit. One should have to voluntarily "opt-in" to receive his e-mail messages.