The deceptive robocalls I told you about last week aren’t confined to Illinois.

The calls, paid for by the National Republican Campaign Committee, are running in 53 US House races, according to the Boston Globe.

The calls beging with “Hello, I’m calling with information about [Democratic candidate’s name here].” Lots of voters tend to hang up after the first sentence, but then they get another call right away from the system, leading some to believe that the Democratic candidate is bombarding them with idiotic calls.

You can listen to some examples of the robocalls done against Tammy Duckworth by clicking here.

Not everyone is blaming the innocent Democratic candidates, however.

Joan Sherrill had not decided how to vote in the 8th Congressional race until she received more than a dozen phone calls from Republican David McSweeney.

At that point, the choice was clear.

“I am voting for (Democrat) Melissa Bean,” the Palatine woman said. “The calls are just too much. They’re annoying.”

Despite all the hooplah on Democratic blogs about the outrageousness of the robocall campaign, as is almost always the case with politics, neither side is completely clean. From Dennis Byrne’s column:

It starts out as a typical poll. “Would you care to answer a few questions about the elections,” the voice on your phone asks. “Whom do you plan to vote for?”

Then it gets weird. As in: “Candidate A beats his wife; does that make you think of him more or less favorably?” Or as my daughter Kati heard when she was called: “Does the fact that Congressman Mark Kirk accepts special-interest money make you think of him more favorably or less favorably?”

So, if you are a supporter of Kirk–the Republican from the north suburban 10th Congressional District who is seeking re-election against Democrat Dan Seals–how are you supposed to answer? Oh, sure, I want my congressman to take special-interest money, so it makes me think more favorably of him.

Which is exactly how Kati, being Kati, answered. Then came four more questions of the same nature, each trying to make Kirk look like he was doing something wrong. And each time, Kati answered that she thinks more favorably of him. She even had the interviewer chuckling. But actually, it wasn’t so funny.

“It’s like Mark Kirk went out and shot 100 people,” she said. “What kind of poll is this anyway?”

The answer is: dirty, low-down and negative.

*** UPDATE *** Pioneer Press has a story up about the robocalls.

Rozanne Ronen, a Barrington resident, got the call — “Hi. I’m calling with information about Melissa Bean …”

Then she got the call again and again and 18 more times, making for a total of about 21 calls since October 24.

“They are very annoying,” Ronen said.

Pat Vockeroth, of Mount Prospect, received the calls too — “Hi. I’m calling with information about Tammy Duckworth …”

“If you only listen to the first sentence, you think they are from the Duckworth campaign,” she said.

But the calls aren’t paid for by Bean, Duckworth or even the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, they are paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.

The media really needs to do something more on this. As other bloggers have noted, this is obviously an attempt at vote suppression.