I support political speech. I would also like to finish a sandwich without a political organization materializing inside my phone.

These positions are compatible. You can tell because neither requires me to surrender my lunch to the Club for Growth.

The Associated Press reports that the conservative group wants the FCC to waive restrictions so political groups can place unsolicited cellphone calls using artificial or prerecorded voices. That includes AI-generated voices. The proposal is still under consideration; the reply period for public comments ends October 19.

So there is time for the commission to experience the uplifting civic act of not doing this.

The Club for Growth argues that political communication deserves treatment comparable to calls about deliveries, banking and medical appointments. Its president casts this as a matter of constitutionally protected conversation.

A delivery notification generally concerns a package I ordered. The campaign has not been dispatched from a warehouse at my request. I did not click “proceed to checkout” on three minutes of somebody’s theory of American decline.

My phone number is not an invitation to address the nation.

The group says its request is not intended to promote robocalls and could improve communication in more languages and help polling. Those may be useful activities. Obtaining permission first would not make them less useful. It would merely introduce the possibility that the intended listener has plans.

That is the part of consent people find terribly inefficient: sometimes the answer is no.

The proposed waiver would still have conditions, including an opt-out and a limit of three calls in thirty days to an individual recipient. Some laws against deception and voter intimidation would remain. This is not a proposal to legalize every imaginable electoral scam.

It is a proposal to move the burden from callers obtaining permission to recipients managing interruptions. Apparently the American voter needs another unpaid administrative position.

And three calls is not the soothing reassurance its authors may imagine. Three unwanted calls are three opportunities to discover that the number you answered because it might be important belongs to a political organization convinced that it is.

AI makes the idea worse, but not because every synthetic voice is necessarily dishonest. The more basic objection is that campaigns are seeking cheaper, easier access to people who did not agree to provide it. A perfectly accurate robot can still be an invasive little bastard.

Democrats should oppose this even if their own campaigns could benefit. In fact, especially then. Defending ordinary people’s control over their time is a better liberal principle than ensuring both parties enjoy equal access to annoying them.

Keep the consent requirement. Let campaigns persuade people to subscribe, attend, donate or answer. They have websites, volunteers, advertisements and an apparently inexhaustible supply of emails explaining that democracy needs twenty-seven dollars before midnight.

They can survive without upgrading my pocket into a campaign venue.

The First Amendment protects your right to speak. It does not oblige me to carry your public-address system around all day.

If the FCC wants to improve political communication, it could start by making politicians hear one very clear message:

Not now.