Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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What did you do in the electoral wars of 2004, Daddy?

I've been noticing a little buzz about telephone surveys and whether or not they are producing "false" results because cellular phones are either not called or are often disqualified.  I notice one more blog about it and I finally wake up to the brewing coffee.  Uh, wait a minute.  Sure, statistics matter (ask any professional ball player or game-show host), but what is it that has us look at survey results as some kind of truth.  Uh oh, can I review the bidding please?

Survey for the Electorate? Who Cares?

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Mobile Majority.  Ross Mayfield mentions that cold-calling cellular phones is illegal, which I will pass on to the next 800-number surveyor who calls me.  Except, as mentioned here, pollsters are explicitly exempted.  My sense is that pollsters still don't like calling cellular phones because of the location and interruption aspect that may actually make the statistics worse, not better.  Whatever better means.

But that's small stuff.  I can imagine the Kerry and Bush teams losing sleep over maps like those at the Electoral Vote Predictor spotted by Dave Winer.  After all, who pays for the polls?  It's a marketing campaign, yes?  And the media folk pay for more polls because for them it is reality TV done large and they are marketing too.  And the media believe their own stuff.  If they see themselves in a battle, the polls are part of the instrumentation of how they might be doing in the war.  Lousy metaphor, making ourselves statistical spectators at a war.

My question is why are we paying attention and what is it that we have bought into about democracy and elections in America where this is the soap opera we pay attention to?  Are we so accustomed to being willingly-manipulated spectators that we don't know when the game is real and the ball is actually in our court?

Consider this:  The minute that you are found thinking that these surveys matter to you as an individual member of the electorate, you've been had.  You have been had.  It has nothing to do with the scientific basis or bias or representativeness of the survey.  The minute you make it matter, you've been had.

So maybe there are three things to do and only three things to do.

1. Make sure that you are registered to vote.
2. Satisfy yourself about the candidates and their records and their bedrock views and integrity.  You can't know anything for sure, but your vote says who you are and what you stand for and that may be the bottom line anyhow.  Because you are being heavily marketed to, both to "keep" you and to sway you, you need to be aware of the desparateness of what you are presented with.  Dan Appleman has some useful clarifications:  sometimes simplest is best.  I invite you to gauge it all from who you are, not what the soap-opera is splashing in your eyes.  And it is OK to be undecided until the final moment and it is more than OK to claim to be undecided and not respond to pre-election survey questions of any sort.  You are not a statistic.
3. Vote.  Have your friends vote.  Encourage your non-friends to vote.  This is not a contest, it is an act of creation that we all participate in.

Have every voice matter.  Honor that.  Go forth and multiply.

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Disclaimer:  I've declared myself about what I think is too important to be distracted from.  This isn't about that.  It's about all of us doing the best we can to cast a ballot that reflects what's important to us and accepting the outcome.  Don't let anyone tell you your vote doesn't matter.  Your vote matters when you say so and when you do it.  Others will guess what your vote means and even what your non-vote means.  Tough for them.  You say.

posted by orcmid at 9/19/2004 08:18:48 AM