Dean's ballot seems to encourage people to vote against matching funds.
I am not a Dean supporter, and I never signed up to get emails from Dean, but somehow the campaign got hold of my email address and started sending me emails anyway. At any rate, today I got the ballot to vote for or against matching funds. (Needless to say, I didn't vote.) I was curious so I checked it out. The ballot says:
The options are:
(a) fund our campaign ourselves and decline matching funds
(b) accept matching funds and the spending limits that go with them
It seems clear, at least to me, that the options are not presented in a neutral way. Option (a) includes the positive phrase, "fund our campaign ourselves" which suggests self-reliance, and (b) includes the negative phrase, "accept ... the spending limits that go with them [matching funds]", emphasizing the limitation that goes along with matching funds. I don't think that the phrase "decline matching funds" in (a) has the same negative connotation. All pollsters know that the way that you phrase the question influences the poll. It is pretty sad to see Dean using this trick against his own supporters. I suppose tomorrow he will claim (if he is victorious) that his supporters freely rejected matching funds. I, for one, will be skeptical.