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PBS under fire for Sarah Palin poll
Boston Herald ^ | September 25, 2008 | Jessica Heslam

Posted on 09/25/2008 9:13:54 PM PDT by BAW

The weekly online polls on “NOW on PBS” usually fetch votes in the thousands.

But a poll asking if Sarah Palin is qualified to be vice president touched a nerve - and drew tens of millions of votes.

And in the end, the hardest questions were being asked of “NOW on PBS” - a newsmagazine show on the public broadcasting network.

The Palin poll was posted earlier this month during the Republican National Convention after John McCain announced the Alaska governor as his running mate.

After the poll sparked intense lobbying by blogs on the left and the right, “NOW on PBS” came under fire for not asking the same about other candidates

“We were focusing on the one question that was timely at the time of the Republican convention because she’d just been introduced as his running mate,” Joel Schwartzberg, director of new media for “NOW on PBS,” said yesterday.

Schwartzberg said the Palin question was “very unbiased” but that people came “en masse” to vote. He said the poll was meant to measure enthusiasm and said no Web poll is scientific.

“NOW on PBS” also was criticized because the poll allowed people to vote more than once. Schwartzberg said PBS didn’t expect the poll “to take off as it did.”

When it realized people were voting more than once, a “cookies mechanism” was installed that allowed only one vote per person, Schwartzberg said.

John Siceloff, executive producer of “NOW on PBS,” issued a public letter Tuesday after receiving throngs of e-mails. Siceloff wrote that according to the single-voter numbers, 50 percent said Palin is qualified to be VP, while 48 percent said no.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: mccainpalin; palin; pbs; pbspoll; propagandawingofdnc
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To: BAW

I voted dozens (or perhaps a hundred) of times. Then yesterday it would only let me vote once. There must have been 10 thread here asking to vote and I received emails from 3 different people telling me to vote.


21 posted on 09/25/2008 9:37:43 PM PDT by TruthWillWin
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To: Uncle Miltie

“Yes, every American realizes that”


22 posted on 09/25/2008 9:40:02 PM PDT by Rembrandt (We would have won Viet Nam w/o Dim interference.)
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To: BAW

It’s also a sham poll as it’s been running for what seems like a month.


23 posted on 09/25/2008 9:40:15 PM PDT by VeniVidiVici (Amazing how Obama, Rangel, Biden and Dodd all got killer mortgage rates and below cost property.)
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To: BAW

How much BS do they think we are going to believe. They only ask if Palin is qualified and not Obama. The media is sickening.


24 posted on 09/25/2008 9:42:45 PM PDT by BJungNan
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To: BAW

Let’s hold a poll... should taxpayers fund PBS since they take marching orders from the DNC?


25 posted on 09/25/2008 9:43:01 PM PDT by John123 (Obambi said that he has been in 57 states. I will now light myself on fire...)
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To: utherdoul

But I know


26 posted on 09/25/2008 9:43:13 PM PDT by dila813
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To: F15Eagle

MacNeil is back? jk....force of habit I know :) Was the show a bit more balanced back then?


27 posted on 09/25/2008 9:43:26 PM PDT by xp38
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To: BAW
We had "back to school night" tonight and as we were roaming the halls of the high school, going from classroom to classroom in accordance with my son's schedule, we saw posters made by the Politics Club stuck on the walls advertising the club's forum topic for next Friday: "Who is LESS qualified to be President?" Beneath that provocative title were photos of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama.

As Monk would say, "I LOL-ed out loud." It was hilarious, though I have a feeling the kids didn't realize the irony. Probably what surprised me most was that the posters haven't been ripped down (yet) by the teachers.

28 posted on 09/25/2008 9:43:33 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: BAW

What’s it going to take to make this poll go away? It keeps poppin’ up in FR like wack-a-mole.


29 posted on 09/25/2008 9:45:35 PM PDT by Gene Eric
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Comment #30 Removed by Moderator

To: BAW

To be fair, the poll has been up for tens of millions of days.


31 posted on 09/25/2008 9:47:59 PM PDT by Question Liberal Authority (McCain Leads. Obama Phones It In.)
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To: dynachrome

Behold the fruits of our labor! lol


32 posted on 09/25/2008 9:48:42 PM PDT by Ros42
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To: BAW


The great equivocator himself - Bill Moyers

Equivocate:
1 : to use language especially with intent to deceive
2 : to avoid committing oneself in what one says
33 posted on 09/25/2008 9:50:26 PM PDT by Liberty Valance (Keep a simple manner for a happy life ;o)
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To: Duke Phelan
It’s easy to get past those “one vote cookie” polls. You just delete your browser cookies and it resets and you can vote again. It isn’t rocket science.

With FireFox you can tell it to block setting cookies from a particular web site. Then you can vote as many times as you want (unless you get a notice that your cookies are blocked).

34 posted on 09/25/2008 9:50:56 PM PDT by CedarDave (NO TAXPAYER BAILOUTS FOR ACORN!!)
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To: SycoDon
That’s what the election will be, 50% McCain, 48% Obama, morons 2% morons illiterate.
35 posted on 09/25/2008 9:55:37 PM PDT by PISANO
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To: BAW

“a “cookies mechanism” was installed that allowed only one vote per person”

rofl foolproof.


36 posted on 09/25/2008 9:57:49 PM PDT by happinesswithoutpeace (You are receiving this broadcast as a dream)
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To: Duke Phelan
You just delete your browser cookies and it resets and you can vote again.

Or just use each of your browsers. I think I have 5 on my main computer (IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, SeaMonkey. And that's just for My MS operating system.

37 posted on 09/25/2008 10:39:25 PM PDT by PAR35
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To: BAW; All

I’ve voted in it several times just today. Never got a message saying I had already voted.

The trick may be to just paste the URL into your browser and then always go back there from your history drop down.

Copy it in and see:

http://www.pbs.org/now/polls/poll-435.html

I just voted AGAIN...


38 posted on 09/25/2008 11:46:07 PM PDT by nralife (www.gunbanobama.com)
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To: BAW

No taxpayer funds for PBS.


39 posted on 09/26/2008 4:36:08 AM PDT by ViLaLuz (2 Chronicles 7:14)
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To: NowApproachingMidnight

You know, that qualifies you as an honorary Democrat.


40 posted on 09/26/2008 5:25:45 AM PDT by ops33 (Senior Master Sergeant, USAF (Retired))
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