Discussion for article #229432
Yeah we are sorry because we got caught, so please unsee what we wanted you to see, because our stupid asses may be in legal trouble. Really though, does anyone believe that anyone who did this will be in any legal trouble, or is it more likely that we will never hear of this again?
2 Likes
I would like to know who FUNDED this “study”.
The reduction of politics to a straight line between “left” and “right” with the “sensible” positions being defined as the midway point is a bad metaphor. It’s time to drop it, not reinforce it, let alone under the state seal. This line does not exist in reality. Our political, social and economic preferences are not “positions” on this non-existent line. Like the “horse race” metaphor, it’s pernicious and destructive of substantial thought.
2 Likes
Go get them! California should send them up for the maximum.
Allow me to offer my perspective as an academic researcher:
Jesus Christ, these fuckin’ guys.
2 Likes
If it is research what are the variables? How will they be able to gauge voter reaction from a mailer? Who deemed the information as accurate? How is this mailer not consider electioneering?
I can reall y see these three using this mailer as a resume enhancer for when they apply to Koch or Rove’s GPS. “Hey look how realistic our scam-mail looked in CA and MT. Hire us”
They sent them to certain precincts and not others, so the control would be the places they didn’t mail to. Not all precincts are identical, but it’s close enough for social science work.
Everything else, though… yeah.
If you follow the link to the MT story you will see that it was the Hewlett Foundation and I think matching money from one of the schools.
$250k from the Hewlett Foundation, $100k from Stanford. The source of the Stanford funding has yet to be disclosed.
“We’re so busy right now,” Scanlan said. “Unless somebody files a complaint, we usually put things aside and then take them up after the dust settles after the election.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s see if we can confuse the voters it 3 states and throw elections to a few more wingnut, right-wing, conservative, Federalist Society-type judges. Stanford and Dartmouth have very right-leaning Political Science departments. The New Hampshire state government (in fact, the whole damned state) is also packed with conservatives and, thus, wouldn’t want to be bothered with investigating anything that helped the right-wing out.
The presidents for both schools sent an unusual open letter Tuesday to Montana voters, apologizing for the mailer and urging them to “ignore” it.
Oh, sure! Please ignore our blatant attempt at trying to influence elections that our biggest financial endowment-types want us to influence them. That’s like a judge telling a jury to “ignore” a string of testimony that he has already allowed a lawyer’s presentation of in open court. It can’t be done and is never undone, no matter how stern a judge’s warning might be.
Once it is observed or read, testimony becomes indelibly etched in the mind of the jury. Judges frequently play this game, even though they know the evidence is inadmissible, to achieve an end result that they (the judge) want.
That’s why lawyers do it. They know they can get away with it and, even though it is unethical and supposedly disciplined by the bar, I defy anyone to point me to a single case where the lawyer ever received more than, at the very most, a letter of warning. A letter of warning is the mildest of the disciplinary measures and is not even a slap on the wrist. It is more like a brush of the wrist with a lightly stroked finger.
The same is true here. Once it is read or observed, the voter can never disregard it and the offending piece of mail will forever have influenced the outcome of the election.
Also… there is this background info…
One of the four named researchers is a co-founder of a company using the same methodology.
From the San Jose Mercury News
“Stanford University professor Adam Bonica recently launched a side business, Crowdpac, that rates political candidates on an ideological spectrum using a similar methodology, raising a conflict of interest question.”
Here’s the site for CrowdPac
https://www.crowdpac.com/about
Scroll down to “The Team”
~OGD~