Are the Town Crier’s online polls of the week accurately reflecting the opinions of our residents? Probably not, in some cases. First of all, polls are dicey anyway, even those claiming to be done objectively and scientifically. Many polls contain biased, leading questions (“Do you think Mr. Jones’ affair with Mrs. Smith was a bad idea?”), and even those with open-ended questions (“What do you think of snow?”) usually have choices like a) love; b) like; c) dislike; d) dislike strongly. Voters are limited in their responses.
So what good are they? Although they draw limited responses and have margins for error, the best polls can be indicators of how people, in general, feel about a topic or a candidate.
At the Town Crier, we run our polls for the fun of it. Ours are nonscientific, informal items are meant less as indicators and more as entertainment, a source of general curiosity. We tried to make responses legitimate, limiting people to one response per computer.
Oops! One recent poll posed the question, “Should the no-drop-off zone at the rear entrance to Blach Junior High School be continued?” We knew this touched on a controversial subject matter to the neighborhood and that schools community, but we wanted to generate interest to our site.
The results? Fourteen residents voted “Yes, for the sake of neighbors and children’s safety.” But a whopping 525 voted “No, this creates more traffic congestion/hazards for everyone else.”
Such results indicate something is our of whack here, and that those on the “no” side found some way around the “one computer, one vote” system. One of the upset “yes” participants said people could go back and vote on the same computer the next day and that there was a concerted effort on the “no” side to, er, stuff the ballot box.
So the poll ended up aggravating those who were already feeling the heat of that neighborhood controversy. We’re sorry for that. And we will be working on shoring up our system so it reflects our original intention: “One computer, one vote.” Period.
