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Jon Stewart, ed.: America (The Book), A Citizens Guide to Democracy Inaction

I am deeply opposed to polling because I do not believe in popular opinion as a measure of something, anything for that matter. Polling is a promotion of entropy of values in our life.

Polls suggest they reveal what America is thinking and it’s insulting that they think we’re so predictable. They’re often wrong announcing what we think because half the time we have no idea ourselves what we think.

Polls are an amusing but superficial indication of what a lot of people think. If any member of Congress accepts a poll as a mandate for how he or she ought to vote, then we’ve got the wrong form of government. Our democracy was never meant to be ruled by popular opinion. Things are too often popular without being right and half the time the public doesn’t know what it’s talking about on issues of importance. We elect representatives who we hope know more about it than we do.

Andy Rooney: Common Nonsense, PublicAffairs, New York, 2002.

Jon Stewart, ed.: America (The Book), A Citizens Guide to Democracy Inaction, Warner Books, New York, 2004.

...million-selling riff on politics and other matters of satire, has been named 'Book of the Year' by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine.

In particular, exit polls on election day should be forbidden by law because no one can make an unbiased reporting out of them (unless by law equal percentage of Republicans and Democrats are forced to vote per hour per site and all participate in polling). And even if that is technically resolved, it should not be allowed for the same reason the candidates do not campaign on the election day.

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