Alicia,
Please see my further responses interspersed with your comments below...
Starchild,
You seem to be missing the entire point of creating a committee. The whole idea is that the convention delegates have ordered this committee to study the subject and bring back one or more ideas that the committee FAVORS and advocates for the larger body to adopt. A proposal cannot go into our report unless it received a majority vote in our meeting. Thus the committee as a collective entity is by definition in favor of everything in the report, even if a minority of us voted against some of them. Part of my job as Chair is to champion the proposals the committee adopted, not only by distributing the reports but also by speaking in favor of them.
That's all well and good, but a pre-convention *survey* of LP members is not the place to be speaking in favor of the proposals. Our Bylaws task the Platform Committee with presenting its report at the convention where its recommendations can be openly discussed and debated by delegates hearing the presentation, not in a one-sided written presentation sent out to a mailing list whose recipients cannot directly debate or discuss it among themselves.
Regarding your characterizations of the survey as a "push poll", I will borrow the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
According to Wikipedia: Push poll - Wikipedia
"In a push poll, large numbers of voters are contacted briefly (often less than 60 seconds), and little or no effort is made to collect and analyze response data. Instead, the push poll is a form of telemarketing-based propaganda and rumor mongering, masquerading as a poll."
I grant you that based on the length of the poll, and the fact that there is a plan to collect and analyze response date, an argument can be made that what you sent out does not meet the technical definition of a "push poll" based on the information on Wikipedia.
However, the Wikipedia entry also states,
"One way to distinguish between push polling as a tactic and polls which legitimately seek information is the sample size. Genuine polls make do with small, representative samples, whereas push polls can be very large, like any other mass marketing effort."
In our case, of course, the number of persons notified of the poll is deliberately large. Further, according to Wikipedia,
"The mildest forms of push polling are designed merely to remind voters of a particular issue. For instance, a push poll might ask respondents to rank candidates based on their support of an issue in order to get voters thinking about that issue."
In our case, the survey goes beyond merely "reminding" or seeking to get prospective delegates thinking about a particular issue. It includes arguments designed to make respondents consider proposals more favorably than they might otherwise.
Whether that meets the technical definition of "push-polling" or not, I think it reflects the common understanding of the term as referring to a question or series of questions not simply written as neutrally as possible in order to obtain accurate information about the pre-existing beliefs of a group of respondents, but rather designed to influence the views of respondents at the same time their responses are being solicited.
The online dictionary I use (TheFreeDictionary.com) defines push polling as:
1. "The use of loaded questions in a supposedly objective telephone opinion poll during a political campaign in order to bias voters against an opposing candidate"
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
(See Push polling - definition of push polling by The Free Dictionary )
On the subject of handling the comments that people submit on the survey, anyone who wishes for their comments about our recommendations to be public is welcome to take to the internet and publish their own comments.
-Alicia
Of course people can always "take to the Internet and publish." That is obvious and beside the point. People who want their responses to be public are likely to want those responses distributed along with the results of the survey. That's what I'm talking about.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))