P2P-Zone - I was paid to spread Republican Propaganda.

$8.50 an hour, if I could complete enough surveys. I was a ‘telesurveyer,’ “I don’t want your money, just your time, it will only take two minutes [yeah right].” More than just pollsters however, we did our paid part to sway public opinion, I’ll let you guess at the precise damage.

A typical call would start like this “Hi my name is John Smith [we were allowed to say any name] and we’re just doing a real quick survey tonight on behalf of Alliance for America [not a precise name, but they were typically generic as such] and we’d just like to ask you a couple [40 or so] questions about YOUR opinions on the Democratic candidates for ______.

I don’t remember specifics, and unfortunately, this was over a year ago, but let me give you an idea of just how shady telephone “polling” is. We never lied. No really, we never once lied, technically. We did, however, spread misinformation. Naturally, these polls were sponsored by political parties, both of them, actually. And The title of this post is largely to gain attention, but I can’t say I remember many Democratically slanted polls, still don’t hold me to it.

Anyway, after we used our nicest voices to get people to participate, a barrage of questions unfolded. Some were harmless “In the election being held on ______ what party do you intend to vote for?” Most surveys open nice and easy, simple unbiased questions are better toward the beginning. They let the telesurveyer build rapport. Because of this, I called a person accepting a survey a “sink,” since their yes was the beginning of a process akin to a hook ’sinking’ into a fish’s mouth. Sinks led to completions of the survey, and for every completion, there was a slight bonus.

What kind of volume are we talking about here?

It was a room full of semi-determined, semi-articulate people, mostly teenagers, trying to get sinks. There were about 40 or 50 of us at any one time, and an average survey completion rate, given a political survey of about five minutes, would be 3 per hour. We were open from 2-9 Monday through Thursday, 2-6 Friday, Eight to four Saturday, and 2-6 Sunday. A total of 44 hours. [Since my leaving, this has likely gone up.] There were seven such “call centers.” And we did a variety of surveys, but some last for weeks, months even. 44 hours x 40 people x 7 call centers x 3 surveys per hour= 86240 5 minute surveys a week. In 10 weeks, 1% or so of the 2004 American Electorate could be reached. And Western Wats, the company, doesn’t have a monopoly on telesurveying.

What kind of Propaganda was it?

Like I said, we didn’t lie. The most basic form of persuasion was the misleading question. If _____ did _____, would that make you more or less likely to vote for them. Think 20 of these, all with the same name.

“If John Kerry voted to raise taxes in the upcoming bill…”

or the more sinister version, which would simply have one line requiring the telesurveyer to say these are hypothetical questions.

“John Kerry voted to reduce funding for police officers showing that he’s soft on crime, would that make you more or less likely to vote for him in the upcoming election?”

Ad infinitum. That’s it, it was that simple. The surveys didn’t pretend to be true, we were required to say things verbatim, where we point out that these are hypothetical statements. There was no lies, just extreme deception. And the reason this is so important is twofold.

...more