On Pollocracy

My fellow Citizens
(1)
The term Pollocracy was coined on may 4, 1990. That was almost 16 years ago.

Since that day the political phenomenon of Public Opinion Polls and surveys on the political opinions of the American People has increased so much that Politicians spend huge sums of money to commission Pollsters to conduct Polls to see what We the People think on any particular subject.

Pollocracy , can be defined simply as the power of Public Opinion Polls.
Thus pollocracy is a tool that can be used to enhance Democracy , or abused to the detriment of Democracy.
The abuse can occur specially during Elections. A good example happened in 1988 when Dukakis was declared to be 13 points behind Pres. G.W. Bush. Tek Koppel interviewed Dukakis and asked him how could he win in the face of such a gap...........bad poll numbers inflence the MORALE of the candidate and the supporters. It could be that many of the Dukakis supporters were so demoralized that they just did not want to go out to vote for a LOSER as declared by the Polls, realizing like Ted Koppel that such a lag was impossible to close just ten days before Elections.
So the electorate should be aware and Beware of this effect on the Morale and suppose that the Polls may be wrong and go out to vote even if their candidate is declared by Pollsters a loser.

It is a wonder to me when I hear Politicians say that they do not pay attention to Polls. I do not think they might be lying...........no, on the contrary . However the meaning of this inattention is quite undemocratic. They really mean they could not care less what the people think, they will do what they themselves want, thus they become autocratic .
Politicians should remember that they were elected to be our representative...........meaning they have the duty to represent our views.........not their own.
I must here also remind us the Citizens that we have the duty to make our views known. Specially if we are opposed to what they are doing. Because unfortunately we are a divided people, and perhaps the other group is making their views known.

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The above was written almost 11 months ago and I had totally forgotten about that, and it was saved as a draft.
So , I will publist this , without even editing it now.















1 : Pollocracy was introduced in a letter published in the Ann Arbor News . You can view the original letter as published by going to POLLOCRACY.COM