Rep Is Troubled by His
Vote on Marriage Amendment
MassNews Staff
July 24, 2002
The first legislator to
be questioned about his vote on the adjournment of
the Protection of Marriage Amendment, Rep. David P.
Linsky (D) Natick, says he is troubled by the vote.
He told the President of
Mass. Citizens for Marriage, Sarah McVay Pawlick,
yesterday that he voted against allowing the legislators
to vote on the measure because he is "part of
a team." He believes the vote will damage the
Democratic Party and the Legislature.
However, he has no plans
to change his vote.
First in a Series
of Interviews
The interview was the first
in a series that MCM is holding with state Senators
and Representatives across the state in an attempt
to force a vote before the Legislature adjourns on
July 31.
"Everyone across the
state is upset with the stench that rose from the
vote on Wednesday," said Pawlick. "We must
do something about this illegal maneuver that is troubling
even the jaded Massachusetts voter. This went beyond
the pale.
"We will be reporting
what other legislators tell us as citizens fan out
across the Commonwealth to question their representatives."
Best Wish is
Loving Mother and Father
Rep. Linsky told Pawlick
that his best wish is that every child has a loving
mother and father. But it is not possible to have
every child in an Ozzie and Harriet atmosphere.
He said he received a large
amount of messages from the opposition and little
from supporters of the Amendment. He reported that
this influenced his decision because he is responsive
to the wishes of his constituents. If he had had more
input from the supporters, he might have considered
his vote more.
However, the total numbers
that swayed him were tiny. He reported about 25 letters
against the Amendment and about 6-10 in favor. The
number of emails against were about 200 to 4, and
telephone calls were "more" against it and
"few" for it.
In response, observers
say most of these messages are easily manipulated
by activists. The emails to Congress are almost all
disregarded by everyone in Washington because it is
so easy for one computer to generate hundreds of bogus
emails. But Rep. Linsky apparently is of the opinion
that most of his are legitimate, although he agrees
he does not know for sure about the vast majority
of them.
Even telephone calls can
be manipulated, say observers, because a legislator
has no way of knowing if a person really lives in
his district, particularly in an area where people
are constantly moving in and out. Keeping a database
like that is practically impossible.
Regardless of what the
actual numbers were, it was not a large number of
messages that were received on such a well publicized
topic. It showed the importance of every contact with
a legislator.
Rep. Linsky said that he
appreciates people who stand up for a cause, even
if he doesn't agree with them, more than the 95% who
do nothing.
Sidebar:
Linsky Influenced by
Bogus Poll of Boston Herald
Rep. Linsky was greatly
influenced by the Boston Herald poll which was released
the day before the vote in an obvious attempt to influence
the voting. A poll is generally released at the last
minute, right before a vote, so that no one has the
time to refute its accuracy.
The Herald has refused
to release any of the data concerning the poll it
says was taken of 402 persons about the Marriage Amendment,
including the questions that were asked and the demographics
of the people to whom they talked, although this violates
professional ethical standards.
The Herald poll said that
52% oppose the Amendment although this flies in the
face of every other poll on the subject.
In a poll taken this year
of 500 persons by Wirthlin Worldwide, 86% disagreed
with the statement that "marriage is an old-fashioned
outmoded institution," and 81% agreed that it
is better for children to be raised in a household
with a married mother and father. The majority of
persons agree that about 60% of the citizens favor
the Amendment.
This refusal to release
the questionnaire and the demographics makes it impossible
for objective observers to determine if the results
cited in this article are credible. An official at
RKM Research and Communications, Portsmouth, N.H.,
refused to release any information about their polling.
In addition, the sample
size used for this survey, 400 respondents, is smaller
than the typical sample size for a state or commonwealth
the size of Massachusetts.
According to the Herald,
this poll was conducted on a Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday. Fridays and Saturdays are days on which
it is generally more difficult to reach "family
values" conservatives because these people are
consumed with family activities at these times.
In addition, women are
most likely to oppose the Amendment. In the Vermont
legislature, the men legislators voted against civil
unions, with only 41 favoring it and 60 against, while
the women voted for it by a four-to-one margin of
35-9. The final vote was 76 in favor and 69 against.
But the Herald won't tell how many of the persons
in their poll were women, whether they were married
or whether they lived in cities, etc.
The Wirthlin poll was 500
adults 18-years or older, randomly generated and stratified
by county according to census population data. In
addition, the sample was validated according to gender,
age, and educational attainment to ensure accurate
representation of the county's adult population. The
margin of error for a sample size of 500 is 4.38 percentage
points in 95 out of 100 cases.
Violates Code
of Ethics
The code of ethics for
the American Association of Public Opinion researchers
states in Section III of the code:
Good professional practice
imposes the obligation upon all public opinion researchers
to include, in any report of research results, or
to make available when that report is released, certain
essential information about how the research was conducted.
At a minimum, the following items should be disclosed:
1) Who sponsored the survey,
and who conducted it.
2) The exact wording of questions asked, including
the text of any preceding instruction or explanation
to the interviewer or respondents that might reasonably
be expected to affect the response …
Source:
AAPO website (www.aapor.org/ethics/code.html)
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