By Kathleen Hunter, CQ Staff

Prerecorded calls offering negative information about every Republican presidential hopeful except former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee caused a bit of an furor in Iowa this week, and Congress just might keep stirring the pot.

The House Administration Subcommittee on Elections is considering whether political dial-a-voter messages ought to abide by the same “do not call” list limits as commercial telemarketers. Lawmakers are concerned that some groups are using the calls to deliberately mislead voters and that the abuse could depress voter turnout.

A spokesman for Zoe Lofgren , D-Calif., the subcommittee’s chairwoman, said she may try to add such a provision to a pending bill (HR 1383) seeking stricter limits on the so-called robo-calls.

During a hearing Thursday, Lofgren said a Pew Internet and American Life Project report indicated that roughly two-thirds of Americans received the prerecorded calls during the weeks preceding last year’s election.

Rep. Melissa Bean , D-Ill., testified that the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spent roughly $60,000 to place more than 1 million robo-calls in her district in October and November 2006.

Bean, who won a second term with just 50.9 percent of the vote, said the calls were designed to leave the impression that they were sponsored by her supporters and not the NRCC.

The message began with a recorded voice stating that the call contained information about Melissa Bean . Some voters hung up and called Bean’s office to complain without listening to the entire message, which eventually identified the NRCC as the sponsor.

“They would describe how the calls woke up their babies, interrupted their dinner, kept leaving them messages on their cell phones that were received late at night or forced them to run to grab the phone, and all they would hear is ‘Hello, I am calling with information about Melissa Bean ,’ for the second, third, fourth time a day,” Bean told the subcommittee.

Other automated calls became a point of contention this week in Iowa, where Huckabee denounced the group, Common Sense Issues — founded by some of his supporters — for launching a string of prerecorded calls bashing other Republican candidates and promoting Huckabee.

If Lofgren decides to add the do-not-call language to her bill, she could model it after legislation that already has been introduced by Pennsylvania Democrat Jason Altmire and North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx .

Both have introduced bills (HR 372, HR 248) that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit politically oriented prerecorded calls to telephone numbers listed on the federal do-not-call registry

The legislation “does not prohibit automated phone calls, but it gives Americans the right to choose not to receive them, just as they would any other solicitation,” Altmire said. “Why should political campaigns be specifically carved out from the do-not-call list when businesses across the country are required to abide by it?”

Democratic and Republican lawmakers said they wanted a balance between protecting residential privacy and protecting free speech. “There are some First Amendment issues here, there is no doubt about it,” Lofgren said.

On June 25, the House passed a broader bill that would punish anyone who attempts to deceive or intimidate voters. The legislation (HR 1281), sponsored by Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Caucus, was a response to civil rights groups’ complaints of efforts to mislead voters in predominantly minority neighborhoods, in part through telephone calls.

Barack Obama , D-Ill., has introduced a similar bill in the Senate, but that chamber has taken up neither version.