WASHINGTON - The azaleas won't yet be in full bloom across North Carolina when voters can expect their phones to start ringing with mechanized political messages ahead of the May primary: Vote for this guy, a recorded voice may say. Don't vote for that one.

At under a dime apiece, automated calls have become a cheap way to reach millions of voters in a matter of hours. They've also become an annoyance to a lot of people trying to eat dinner.

So Congress is tackling the robocall.

N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper traveled to Washington on Wednesday to tell senators that politicians -- like telemarketers -- should not be allowed to call people on the national do-not-call registries.

That means voters who register for protection against telemarketers would be shielded from robocalls by political campaigns.

"Many consumers are sick of them," Cooper told a Senate committee. "And they believe the do-not-call registry they've signed up for should stop them."

Robocalls are an issue nationally. The campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain traded negative robocalls before Romney dropped from the presidential race. On the Democratic side, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are doing much the same.

Last year, Cooper tried to persuade the legislature to pass a law that would forbid state political campaigns from calling people on the statewide do-not-call registry. The bill didn't pass, but this week he asked local political parties to abide by the registry.

States across the country, including Colorado, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, also have bills moving through their legislatures.

But some argue that such restrictions would hurt the constitutional freedom-of-speech protections afforded political campaigns.

James Bopp, a lawyer who has argued campaign law before the U.S. Supreme Court, testified Wednesday that most restrictions on robocalls would limit candidates' ability to contact voters and come perilously close to breaking First Amendment protections.

He called robocalls "a modern form of door-to-door campaigning."

North Carolina's delegation in Congress is largely in favor of more restrictions.

"Get rid of these robocalls," said Rep. Health Shuler, a Waynesville Democrat.

Shuler, a freshman who won a tight election against incumbent GOP Rep. Charles Taylor, was targeted by robocalls in 2006 that set phones in his district jingling at 3 a.m., angering voters who mistakenly thought the calls came from Shuler.

"I was receiving phone calls at my house. My neighbors were receiving phone calls," Shuler said.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a Salisbury Republican, supports the idea of applying the do-not-call registry's provisions to political campaigns, her spokeswoman said Wednesday.

U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Banner Elk Republican, filed a bill four years ago to add politicians to those who must honor national do-not-call registries. It didn't go anywhere then, but she said she is trying again.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, and Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, have introduced a bill that would restrict robocalls to between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., and limit them to two calls a day.

"Restrictive enough? That's nothing," Shuler said when he heard of the proposals in Feinstein's bill.

Feinstein initially told Cooper on Wednesday that she would be in favor of studying his idea to apply the registry's provisions to political candidates.

Then she heard Cooper's pitch.

Cooper said his office received hundreds of complaints in 2006. He said that in 2004 a hospital in Davie County had phone lines tied up in its emergency room and its patient rooms for 30 minutes by a robocall that wouldn't die.

And Cooper described the invasion of privacy that residents feel, the worry from disabled residents angry about having phone lines tied up, the confusion of senior citizens who don't understand why the person calling them won't talk back to them.

"Robocalls do irreparable damage by disrupting our family time at home," Cooper said. "This is not a speech issue. This is a privacy issue."

Less than an hour into the hearing, Feinstein nodded. She had not included in her bill a provision adding political calls to those covered by the do-not-call registry. But now, she said, "I think we should. ... I'm going to modify the bill."

"That's great," Cooper said after the hearing. "This makes the legislation much stronger and more effective."