Online polling is wreaking havoc on governance
There's a far more effective way to gauge public opinion and it recently got even more so
"It's a poll asking me to give my opinion about which poll is the best opinion poll."
At my high school graduation, I was told to reach for the stars. However, if I caught them, I don't recall being instructed to put them in my eyes. But that is exactly what somebody on the City of McCall staff did with a poll on the Streets Local Option Tax.
Last October, the McCouncil heard the results of a 10-question poll seeking public sentiment on various aspects of a 10-year local option tax (LOT) to fund city street infrastructure. The tax is up for renewal this year.
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Consider the staffer's conclusion (bold face mine):
SUMMARY: Most citizens think the Streets LOT is very important for keeping our infrastructure in good shape, showing strong community support for the tax. Often mentioning the clear benefits of the LOT, especially in street repairs and new sidewalks, which can lead to continued support. The survey shows that residents prioritize projects that improve safety and accessibility, like street repairs and bike lanes, which can motivate voters to renew the tax if they see real improvements. While there are some concerns about project management and fund allocation, the overall feedback suggests that residents are open to improvements rather than opposing the tax and addressing these concerns can further strengthen support for renewal. Overall, the survey indicates that the community values the LOT and its contributions to local infrastructure, suggesting a favorable environment for renewing the tax in the election.—Source: City Council packet for special meeting 10/03/24
A total of 440 people responded to the survey. At the time the poll was conducted, McCall had roughly 2600 registered voters. So this summary is based on a sample that is about 17% of the electorate. Most citizens think? Is there no limit to what the bureaucratic imagination can conjure? Reality simply can’t match their skill.
'Shows that residents? Strong community support for the tax?'
This was not a scientific survey in which respondents are carefully screened to be a representative sample. It was a y'all come, and I really doubt that they checked responses to see if respondents were registered voters or not. Fortunately, for the 83% of McCall's electorate who didn't feel like taking time for a rather lengthy questionnaire, they will still have a chance to weigh in on the LOT (in May, I presume). But what if a vote weren't compelled by state law? McCall residents would probably find themselves billed for a tax fashioned and approved by a minor fraction of the electorate. It's happened before.
If any of McCall's public officials or staff questioned what percentage of the electorate the survey represented, it isn't anywhere in the minutes. Instead, there's this:
(A city council member) noted that although (he) is receiving negative feedback from the public, the survey received overwhelming support for the works that are being done and LOT priorities.
Huh? Wanted: public servants interested in taking a class on healthy skepticism.
There have been a bunch of these patently false assumptions, along with poorly worded poll questions, used to justify a disturbing amount of public policy lately. What gave the writer of those conclusions (and the city council member who blindly accepted them) the notion that 17% of anything justifies putting words in the mouths of the voter? In the Afterthoughts section, I'll present some more variations of poll misuse.
The utility of a poll depends greatly on what question is asked and how it is asked. Trained practitioners of marketing (my native tongue) are very careful to use them to validate only the most open concepts. I used that strategy in a poll I took recently gauging my readers on whether they thought repealing a local taxing district should be put to a popular vote.
Unlike the city's poll, which asked respondents to judge the actual merits of a thing, my question was much more broad and philosophical. Even if the respondent sample was small and not pre-qualified to be representative, a whopping 92% chose the same option. If the result had been closer, or if my readers are all members of a cult (you aren't are you?), there would be a strong basis for questioning the validity of that result. By contrast, there were only a couple questions in the city poll in which none of the above was even an option. Because of that, they got an earful eyeful of negative sentiment in the comments—worthy of a Reddit thread. That wasn’t noted in the minutes either, incidentally. Most of the preferences the poll offered scored less than 50%. Half of 17% is...what?
Nuthin'. Just. Sayin'.
Online polls are great tools to test ideas, not to fashion policy. That's what us marketers use them for. That's how I used my poll. "Should we be consulting the voter on this," not "should we do this?" Policy polls suffer the same shortcomings of an ancient mariner test. If the captain released a dove and it didn't come back, logic dictated that land was nearby. However, the consequences of not accounting for variables in that method meant a lot of seamen never made it back to their wives. So, one day, a seafaring savant improved on the one-dove method. He decided to get a more representative and reliable sample. He released several doves, not just one. When none of them came back, the vote was in. Improved data saved more ships and more happy reunions took place.
Tongue Twister of the Day: Less polling and more, uh, 'referenduming'
A couple years ago, the Idaho Legislature had a stroke of genius (or maybe it was just a collective stroke). They put the kibosh on stand-alone elections that were running voters ragged and resulting in turnouts of as little as 15%. Today, balloting can occur only twice a year, in May and November.
The net effect has been to boost voter turnouts to at least 50% and usually much higher. Think of how Amazon took over the world by digitizing the age-old, "one-stop" success of shopping malls. When shoppers were given more choices at a single, convenient location, they shopped more and spent more. Instead of ‘running all over town’ voting for a bond levy in February and another one in June and another one in September, the voter now is offered a buffet menu to consider. The rest of the year, they can go about that pursuit of happiness they were promised when they signed up for this country.
There is no longer any reason to base any decision regarding major expenditures of public funds—or substantial re-appropriations of earmarked monies for that matter—on a poll. Public officials are elected to make decisions on our behalf, sure. But too often they get themselves into trouble by assuming that their preferred option is the majority's. "Don't like what I decide? Vote me out." "Don't like what I decide? Run yourself." Tom and I encountered many variations of that type of self-righteous pugnacity from 'public servants' during our careers. It's a dandy strategy, because by the time these butt-heads' terms expired, their expensive, poor judgments had been lost in the eternal sandstorm of yesterdays. The electorate's memory-banks are too challenged by life to remember a grudge, much less carry one. It is the most exploited weakness of democratic governance, in my humble opinion.
Referendums are also called advisory votes (much easier to say). For policy-makers, their beauty is that they are non-binding. As the name implies, they are for advisory purposes only. In that way, they are just like a poll, but oh, soooo much more accurate. Goodbye 17% response rate. At least a majority sample is reliably guaranteed. I envision May and November becoming biannual civics street fairs; an opportunity for the electorate to focus, consider, learn, decide...and be done for another six months.
There's nothing stopping that vision. Elections are now set events which can be easily worked into the decision-making process. No non-emergency decision is too momentous and urgent to wait six months for the next election. There is only one reason I can think of that a public body would not want to take advantage of the advisory vote option:
They really don't want to take the stars out of their eyes.
Scroll down for afterthoughts after this commercial break:
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Afterthoughts, Observations and Authentications
• Alright, Miss Smarty Pants, a member of McCouncil might ask. How do we get a read on public opinion by referendum? Glad you asked! If you can fashion a ballot question to tabulate votes for multiple candidates, then there should be no problem writing one that tabulates choices. The city spent who-knows-what on paid staff time to craft, tabulate and evaluate the opinions of a 17% vocal minority. In addition, the thing was mailed, so there’s postage expense. Instead, they could have put the following question to the voters on last November's ballot (which had a 78% turnout). The cost to the city would have been 0. They could have evaluated the results, and put the actual tax renewal question on the May ballot. Here is my back-of-the-envelope stab at what such a question could look like:
The McCall Streets Local Option Tax, authorized by voters in 2015, is set to renew in December, 2025. The tax collects 1% of retail sales (excluding groceries and motor vehicles) and 3% from lodging establishments. The tax is used to repair street infrastructure. If voters renew the tax in the next election, which one of the following best describes your top priority? Choose only one.
—Improving/maintaining streets
—Stormwater management
—Sidewalk improvements
—Improving snow removal
—Underground infrastructure
—ADA compliance
—This is an unnecessary tax
• In 2018, the Valley County Commission somehow got it in its noggin' that a referendum is the same as a binding tax initiative. They floated the idea of a permanent tax (this was their first mistake:) to replace the mercurial federal funding they had been using for road maintenance. The idea got a favorable response (69% of a very high turnout), but the state got heartburn over the execution and forced a do-over. In the interim, the county made some very poor marketing decisions and the initiative got a hair's width majority (50.7% of a very poor turnout), well short of what it needed. Advisory votes accurately reflect public sentiment far better than online polls, but if the agency takes the result for granted and mucks up their momentum, they can lose that sentiment.
• Fun Factoid of the Week: Modern marketing majors all have drilled into their heads the lesson learned by the parables of New Coke and Google Glass. Both conglomerates invested millions in the creation and marketing of products that their polling told them would go over like free money. Instead, the sweetened Coke and the computerized eyewear tanked, losing all those millions and, more importantly, the love and respect of shareholders. Wearers of the Google product were ridiculed as Google Glassholes. New Coke was so shunned, there were no adopters to tease. The late-night comedian David Letterman tellingly joked, Coca-Cola announced the return of old Coke. That's great news for those of us who were still hoarding it like it was a controlled substance.
• And on a Personal Note: The most destructive feature of the internet to the news business wasn't giving everybody their own personal printing press. It was giving editors the ability to conduct online polls. Literally overnight, every online news site pelted readers with such weighty questions as:
Would you rather fight a chicken every time you get in your car or an orangutan with a sword once a year? / Does pineapple belong on pizza? / Do you think the moon is real? / Should oxygen be free? / Should hospitals be required to save lives? / Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck?
Even more pernicious, was running "what do you think...?" poll results (The Citizens Have Spoken) in place of well researched, thoughtful editorials. Thus the demise of the 'conscience of the community.' Even if readers disagreed with the editorial opinion, they recognized and respected a diligently constructed argument when they saw one. Except for a few quixotic hold-outs, that's all gone. A shame.
• Presentation to the council on the streets tax poll (this was linked earlier but here it is again). The comments are worth your time.
Hah. RM. Are you saying I'm just too "blah, blah, blah"? I'm delighted to see that I have no quibbles with the ai summary. Except that I note that your ai preference does not cite the substantiation behind my conjectures. It represents them accurately. But how does that help you evaluate whether or not I'm bat-shit crazy?
“The eternal sandstorm of yesterdays.” Recent polling suggests that these dunes are reaching neck level for some elected officials. The same poll also indicated that 17% of the respondents are “bat-shit crazy”.