Sign HuffPost's Say "No" to Pollsters Petition!

Today's political landscape is littered with politicians and reporters addicted to treating polling results as if Moses just brought them down from the mountaintop. Since we can't expect these polling junkies to kick the habit on their own, we've decided to stage an intervention. And it's as easy as hanging up your phone. If enough of us refuse to answer pollsters' questions, their data will become so unreliable even the media would have to admit it was useless. --Arianna Huffington

Step 1: Sign this petition and take the pledge to Say "No" to Pollsters!

*First Name:
*Last Name:
*E-mail Address:
*State:	AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY
*Zip Code:
*Do not publish my name online:
I am a HuffPost user with an account (HuffPost username):

HuffPost values your privacy. The information you submit is subject to our Privacy Policy.
Step 2: Add the Petition Badge to your Site
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/11/sign-huffposts-say-no-_n_81136.html"><img src="http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/9227/original.jpg" border="0" alt="Sign the Petitino"></a>

Check back often to see the number of people who join this movement!

To read Arianna's full blog post on the petition, click here.

Step 3: Roll over the map to see the number of people who have signed by state
3807 People have signed this petition.

Comments

[CaptainObvious]

12:55 PM on 01/25/2008

The problem isn't the polling, the problem is the media that covers the "horse race" to the exclusion of anything else.

[brently]

06:51 AM on 01/25/2008

Polls are accurate. They are used in other countries to identify election fraud. But here, in "America", we let those in power create a reality to fits their goals. Bush "won" in Ohio over Kerry... 9/11 was pulled off by 19 muslims who hate freedom... and so on.

[NotaBeliever]

07:59 AM on 01/23/2008

According to the posting date, this has been up for a week and only pulled 3243 signatures. I'd call that a miserable failure for the petition. [Maybe it should be taken down.]

[Meah]

01:42 PM on 01/22/2008

I say NO to HuffPo's request. I welcome exit polling as a critical tool to determine discrepancies. Inappropriate HuffPo.

[nellie]

06:59 PM on 01/21/2008

I cannot sign. Election manipulation is becoming chronic in this country. Exit polls are the only way to detect election fraud.

Voter suppression. Electronic voting machines. Discarded registration cards. Uncounted absentee votes. Voter caging. Purged voter rolls. Secret tabulations. Media shut out. Swift boating. Robocalls. Hacked memory cards. Provisional ballots. Precinct misinformation. Intimidation. Privatized voting.

We have bigger things to worry about than polling.

[Meanwhile]

11:45 AM on 01/21/2008

This little campaign makes no sense to me.

If you believe polls have that much power, how is it going to be helpful to the Democratic cause to remove Democratic voices from the polling process?

Valid or not, they are going to publish the results anyway, and it's going start looking like the country agrees with Bush and O'Reilly.

[LittleBrother]

11:42 AM on 01/21/2008

Sign HuffPost's Say "No" to Pollsters Petition!
________________________________________________

Well, I would, but the thing is... I just signed a Say "No" to Petitions Pledge!

If only you'd asked me sooner!

[genoasail]

10:43 AM on 01/21/2008

This is a silly idea, and discourages an insistence on critical thinking skills.

Geez, while we are at it, why don't we just call for an end to the whole field of statistics, and, oh hell, why not ban ALL of mathematics while we are at it.

[tinkaboutit]

12:28 AM on 01/21/2008

I thought there was a Huffington-sponsored pollster-tracking project announced a few months ago. Anyone remember that? That was a good idea. What happened HP?

[NotaBeliever]

01:51 PM on 01/20/2008

After due consideration, I'm still thinking this petition is kind of ill-considered. Suppose the polls don't match the vote ... to a high-enough degree to bring suspicion upon one or the other ... then we have the opportunity to see which is bogus and which is not. Knowledge is power.
Now if the purveyors of polling data know what the polls are actually asking, how the polls are conducted, and in what timeframe instead of running to publish every bit of polling data that comes down the pike, the purveyors of polling data might not be embarrassed ... so often.

[StanTheManic]

11:21 AM on 01/20/2008

Too little too late for those of us in Iowa. We've already had our 943 intrusive freakin phone calls for the year. But I'll sign ... for the future!

Thanks.

[tinkaboutit]

12:08 AM on 01/20/2008

WTF? Wasn't there a Huffington project a few months ago about tracking pollsters questions??

And what about exit polls? How will we know if there's vote fraud?

HP explain yourself

[OhPlease2007]

11:49 PM on 01/19/2008

Since HuffPost keeps on posting the polls, only when they show Obama is ahead, and hate them because they make HuffPost look utterly ridiculous because they placed so much importance in them in all their splashy-glory, when they showed Obama was ahead of course, only a complete sucker would ever sign this complete joke of a, 'petition.'

LOL

Edwards '08!

[romchr]

10:03 PM on 01/19/2008

I took a poll just the other night. First time. It was kind of amazing, actually... after answering a list of reductive questions like, "Does X appear presidential," it took a weird turn...

I was asked if I felt Martin Luther King's "dream" had been achieved. I was asked if I felt the standard of living of "black people" has improved over the last 10, 40 years. And then came the kicker...

"Black people earn less than whites. Have a lower standard of living. Lower, blah, blah, blah... do you think this is because of discrimination, or because of SOMETHING ELSE?"

I told him I thought his question was fucked and I wouldn't answer it. I also told him I thought Huckabee was a douche bag.

[Quaoar]

09:52 PM on 01/19/2008

"And it's as easy as hanging up your phone."

Actually if you have Caller ID, it's as easy as not answering the phone if the caller is someone you don't recognize. Probably every poll since the advent of Caller ID has been invalid because most people actually answering pollsters are the people without Caller ID.