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Whether they realize it or not, the Spokane City Council is asking to cook the books on the Community Bill of Rights charter amendment and skew the results of the November vote. They’re using a strategy campaigns sometimes use to get the result they want.
This newspaper’s longtime pollster Del Ali cautioned us years ago that one can skew the results of a poll not just by what’s asked, but by the order of the questions. It’s advice we still use to evaluate polls before reporting them.
One of the oldest tricks is to put the question for the results after several other loaded questions. For example, if you were a challenger trying to show your incumbent senator is not well supported by the constituents, you wouldn’t just ask “Overall, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Sen. Sneed?”
Instead, you’d first ask something like, “Would it change your opinion of Sen. Sneed if I told you he supports turning Glacier National Park into a nuclear waste dump?” or “Would it change your opinion of Sen. Sneed if I told you he supports tripling your income tax rate and spending it on more federal agents to take away your guns?”
After giving Sen. Sneed several nasty jabs – they don’t have to be things he supports because of the “if I told you” lead-in – the survey asks if the voter’s opinion is favorable or unfavorable. Sneed’s favorable rating goes way down, and the challenger’s campaign staff claims those numbers prove he’s vulnerable.
This is, for all practical purposes, what the City Council voted to do last Monday for the November ballot. (An election is arguably just a big poll with a 0 percent margin of error.) The council added two advisory questions to the ballot. Reduced to their simplest, the questions are “Should we raise taxes to pay for the Envision Spokane Bill of Rights?” and “Should we cut services to pay for it?”
Faced with those options, some voters who don’t want higher taxes, ever, or fewer services, ever, will figure it makes sense to vote no on the charter change.
If the council truly wanted to know the public’s feeling on the amendment, it could hold a straight up or down vote and members could argue during the coming months that they thought this will lead to the city raising taxes or cutting services. Of course, someone might point out that those are the decisions they are elected to make, and they rarely ask the voters’ advice.
But what truly makes it “cooking the books” is the order of the questions the council is proposing. The “Bill of Rights” is a charter change, which is sort of the municipal version of a constitutional amendment, and arguably at the top of the legal hierarchy. Advisory questions, which the council can follow or ignore based on circumstances and its collective judgment, are several rungs down the ladder. But the council wants to put the advisory questions ahead of the charter change.
What if the Founding Fathers had asked if citizens of the new country whether wanted to pay more taxes to guarantee all this free speech, press and assembly, or what services they’d want to give up to make sure guilty people got a fair trial?
Voters aren’t stupid, but can be manipulated over the short term. By bumping the advisory questions ahead of the charter change, council members may find it easier to get what they want – which, as they’ve made pretty clear, is the amendment to fail.
But here’s the problem with cooking the books, as any pollster will tell you: You can get the result you want. You just won’t know if the result is valid.
Jim Camden is a veteran political reporter for The Spokesman-Review.
Jonathan Brunt covers Spokane City Hall for The Spokesman-Review.
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George_Sands on August 09 at 12:18 p.m.
Both sides were cooking something when it comes to the DimVision Bill of Writes.
For the council it was the ballot and for the DimVison folks it was some meth or crack.
CalJones on August 10 at 7:09 a.m.
Maybe Envision Spokane should just sue the city like they keep threatening to do. I think Council did the right thing, and I am glad Al French has been guided by his Oath of Office through all of this. Envision Spokane is like a baby who’s messed themselves, and they just keep relying on the press to wipe their bottoms for them.
BillBill on August 10 at 8:59 a.m.
Jim Camden accurately articulates this issue of skewing polls and ballots. Are our City Council members so afraid of voters that the elections must be manipulated? Would it change your opinion of City Council if I told you that they are beholden to homebuilders and developers?
One never has to wonder where Al French and Nancy McLaughlin come down on any issue. Just look to see what the big-money, special interests want done. Are these Council members and their major campaign contributors so afraid of voters?
Neighbors? Local community members? They matter not. Use empty platitudes, like “fiscal responsibility.” Ignore the fiscal burden a big box or a new subdivision puts on infrastructure, like roads, fire, schools, for which these incremental tax revenues will never pay. We, the taxpayer, pay for and subsidize these unpaid infrastructure costs. That most decidedly is not fiscal responsibility.
Bah! Never give the citizens an even break. Big business over voters, as per usual.
Check this out yourself. Follow the special interest money. It is all there, right on the net. Go to the State of Washington’s Public Disclosure Commission (PDC)website: http://www.pdc.wa.gov/servlet/ContServlet
Mr. Camden, this was a most enlightening article. I, for one, am disappointed in our City Council.
George_Sands on August 10 at 4:23 p.m.
I guess BillBill would rather let the Dimvisionites lie to him rather than listen to an elected group of people whom have sworn not to hornswoggle us.
I guess you would rather they turn a blind eye to another Riverpark Square?
If it is smoke, are you assuming that the average citizen is STUPID enough to neither see and recognize it.
Either way you lose.
JoshH on September 27 at 2:10 p.m.
I guess George doesn’t actually want to address the issues raised by BillBill’s post. Instead, he’d rather hurl silly names and declare himself the winner of the argument. You know, we all lose when our political discussions become the equivalent of schoolyard “I know you are but what am I” name calling.
As BillBill has pointed out, follow the money. Who is backing the anti-Prop 4 groups? Developers and people who benefit from the status quo, such as big box retail stores. Doesn’t that make you think, “Hmmm, I wonder why?”
Whether you support Prop 4 or not, Camden makes an excellent point, i.e., city council should trust voters to make a decision for themselves, not manipulate the result. If you don’t like Prop 4, don’t vote for it, but please stop with the name calling and Limbaughesque behavior.
CalJones on September 27 at 8:30 p.m.
It’s amazing, when the Realtors spend 20k on a city council election it makes front page news, (see Brad Stark). When Jim Sheehan spends 55k plus in-kinds, on an extremely controversial ballot proposition it goes completely unreported.
Although they will give him front page coverage for having a “green” home.
Thanks Spokesman Review and Jim Camden. You are about as fair and balanced as Fox News on the other side.
Lulubelle on September 27 at 11:19 p.m.
Gee Cal……talk about “fair and balanced”? I didn’t see any reporting on the following donations to defeat Prop 4 either:
Worthy - $5000
Cowles - $5000
Spokane Assoc of Realtors - $12,000
Spokane Bldrs & Owners - $5500
WA Trust Bank - $5000
Spokane Home Builders - $4500
Associated Bldrs - $5500
Avista $4315
Build East - $5000
Assoc Ind - $5000
and these are just some of the “high rollers”.
I think I’m seeing a trend here…….builders? developers?…..scared of losing the stranglehold they’ve had on this city of the past several decades? I don’t know…..just saying…..
JCotton on September 28 at 1:18 a.m.
Additionally do you think it is merely coincidence that the anti-Prop 4 group is organized and housed by and at the Spokane Homebuilders Association? I wonder if the thousands of signs that the anti-group has placed all over Spokane can be in any way accounted for either as expenditures or in-kinds on the Washington PDC reports, as referenced above.
The same City Council culprits work for special interests over and over. Time for these professional politicians to step down and make way for regular citizens to take their turn, regular people not owned by a few wealthy special interest groups.