It was Sunday afternoon and our family was getting ready to watch an old movie. It was a movie based on a true story about the corrupt Chicago government of the 1930s. It was about how a gang had been able to shoot a policeman and get away with it. It was about how people were able to get alcohol even when it was against the law. It was about police who looked the other way to allow a speakeasy to operate. The gang was able to frame two small time thieves with the murder and the corrupt police department would rather have a conviction than an unsolved case. The mayor and even the governor would rather not dig into a case that was already solved. The gang was able to frighten an eyewitness into lying for them in court and the two innocent men were convicted. Everyone was conditioned to believe that the government was right and innocent men don't go to jail.
It seems real easy to see the multiple errors in this true story from the 1930s. It is easy to believe that these politicians would rather choose the easy solution than the truth. Only when the mother of one of these convicted men ran a personal advertisement seeking someone to set the record straight did a reporter become interested. The reporter, being prompted by his editor, began to uncover the truth some eleven years later. But, even this reporter doubted the innocence of the two men. Somehow when distance and time come between you and the event it all seems to make sense, because you are not affected by the events in question. The point is, no one wants to believe that things don't work the way you thought that they worked.
So, when I got a phone call from a pollster this Sunday afternoon I thought that I would like to give my point of view. After all, in a poll I represent many people and I want people to know how I feel about the issues. That should be obvious to you if you are reading this.
The pollster began by asking if he was speaking to the right person and if I was going to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary. Since I have voted in every election since I have turned 18 I answered with a confident yes. Then he asked me if I had been following my local state assemblyman race, to which I had to admit that I wasn't. After all, the election wasn't until June and even the local paper hadn't had anything about the race yet. Where was I going to get my information?
It turns out that in my district there are two former mayors running for the same seat in my primary. They are from cities in which I don't follow the politics, so I really never heard of either of these two people before. Little did I know, I was the ideal candidate for this phone call. He asked me which candidate I preferred. I felt a little embarrassed about not knowing about these candidates, but that didn't matter to the pollster, he just told me to answer the questions and it didn't matter. He said, so you are undecided and I agreed with him. He put me at ease by asking about my general feeling about education, health care, the environment, jobs etc... I began to feel like I was contributing to the poll.
Then he went back to the two candidates. He went through a list of supposed "good" things about one candidate. After each one he asked me to rate whether the information would be beneficial in helping me decide between the two candidates. I needed to answer, "extremely beneficial," "very beneficial," "somewhat beneficial," or "not beneficial." He asked me about ten different specific "things" about the candidate. Then he asked me about three negative things about the same candidate asking for the same responses. Then he moved on to candidate number two, where he proceeded to ask about ten negative things about this candidate. And he never mentioned a single positive point about candidate number two. That's when I finally caught on that this poll was actually an advertisement for candidate number one.
Now, I new about push polling from the news stories from the 2000 Republican primary election in South Carolina. This is where George W Bush hired pollsters to push poll the Republicans in South Carolina with questions like, "If you knew that John McCain had been diagnosed with a mental disorder would that influence your decision?" or "If you knew that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child would that influence your decision?" But now that I have experienced it first hand I am upset about the dishonesty involved here.
First of all, at no point does the caller identify himself as being affiliated with either candidate, but it is certainly clear from the questions asked later on. However, secondly, the pollster is basically posing as a pollster but is a telemarketer instead. Thirdly, the deception isn't complete unless the pollster can maintain the appearance of being a neutral party asking neutral questions. People under the guise of taking a poll have let their guard down, because they are lead to believe that they are letting their opinions be heard, when instead the pollster is preying on this dropped defense in order to influence the unsuspecting person.
To me this practice is quite despicable. Basically the candidate that hired a firm to do this believes that deception of the public will get them elected. Knowing that this is being used as a political strategy tells me more about their personal honesty than all of the reasons the pollster cited in his "poll." However, most people will never know that the poll was actually an advertisement. How many people that were called would recognize what was being done? What about all the people who weren't called? They certainly wouldn't know that it was being done. If a politician is running for a seat in the assembly, congress, or senate I expect honesty to be the number one issue. If I can't trust them in general, then how can I trust them to do what they promised to do when they win the election?
What ever happened to campaigning on the issues? Maybe I am being naïve, but shouldn't a candidate champion the best in what they have done and win based on previous jobs well done? I feel like the characters in the movie that believed that the government worked. People who were elected deserved to be elected, because they earned it with hard work and getting their message out to the people. All of that effort, meant that they were likely to continue to make an effort for our community. But, the slimy action I witnessed with the push polling has made me a little more cynical once again. Just how many candidates are using this technique? Can there ever be an honest politician? How can these people be exposed?
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit