Have you ever participated in a Web vote on a matter of public interest? Perhaps it was run by a radio or television station or a newspaper or magazine. Many of the questions, usually seeking a yes/no answer, relate to issues canvassed in this blog e.g. ‘Should sex education be mandatory in Australian schools?’; ‘Should the government move to limit funding for IVF treatment?’ Naturally, these sorts of questions attract the interest of Religious Right organisations.

If you carefully follow the course of voting on these issues, you may notice that it often traces a particular trajectory. Take a recent Melbourne Age online poll on the question, ‘Do you support the proposed [Victorian government late-term] abortion regulations?’ (These regulations would implement a 48-hour ‘cooling-off’ period and mandatory counselling before a late-term abortion.) After about 2,600 votes had been lodged, ‘yes’ was running at 42% and ‘no’ at 58%. However, at the 3,000-vote mark, ‘yes’ had improved to 45%, while at 3,500 votes, ‘yes’ was up to 48% (the final score, as far as I can tell).

The sudden improvement in the ‘conservative Christian’ position, which usually occurs fairly late in the poll, is often much more spectacular. Take an Age web poll conducted last March on the question, ‘Would you have a problem with an openly gay teacher educating a child in grade five or six?’ After 720 votes, ‘yes’ had scored 25% and ‘no’, 74%. By the time the poll closed on 1,645 votes, ‘yes’ had suddenly jumped to 43% while ‘no’ had plummeted from 74 to 57%.

What happens, of course, is that some Religious Right groups take a short time to become aware of the existence of a particular poll. It normally takes a little while longer for them to alert their email readerships, and by this stage the poll is usually running fairly strongly against their favoured position. This is to be expected in areas like abortion, dying with dignity etc., where scientifically-conducted public opinion polls consistently show solid support for freedom of choice or something close to it. Suddenly, however, hundreds - in some cases, possibly thousands - of Religious Right votes are thrown into the mix and the whole complexion of the vote changes within a few hours.

There is nothing fundamentally illegal or immoral about this. Religious Right supporters are as entitled to their vote as anyone else and they’re certainly not the first political group to act en bloc from time to time. I will add a small caveat about this later, but first let’s work through a short case study.

On Thursday 20 October, the ABC’s ‘Catalyst’ science program ran a segment on the ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID) controversy, inviting viewers to cast a web vote on the question, ‘Do you think intelligent design should be taught in science classrooms?’ Throughout the remainder of Thursday evening, the vote ran at around 25% ‘yes’ and 75% ‘no’, within very tight parameters.

Early on Friday morning, the Melbourne ‘Salt Shakers’ (SS) group - a creationist body, among other things - told its email readers about the ‘Catalyst’ poll, provided the voting link, and noted that:

The Yes vote is trailing badly and needs a big boost. Admittedly Catalyst is a scientific type program and the scientists [sic] community were primed ready to go but we can pull it back. This is an important challenge - the non Christians see this [i.e. ID] as a challenge to their evolution THEORY - they are afraid they will be proved wrong - we certainly hope so. LET US VOTE.

Later the same morning, Peter Stokes, SS Executive Officer, thought it advisable to send a longer email to supporters explaining why they should hurry up and vote. ‘The anti-creation brigade’ was unable to prove their long-held ‘beliefs’ about evolution:

If Intelligent Design had no credibility, [evolutionary scientists] would not be fighting so hard … It is up to Christians to use this opportunity to take the debate one step further. BUT let us not jump the gun - it may be advantageous to let the ‘intelligent’ message sink in for a while and for people to ask the question themselves about who the ‘designer’ might be before we jump in to ram it down their throats.

Stokes proceeded to inform his readers that ‘evolution IS only a theory - It is NOT science as is being claimed.’ Regarding cosmic origins, ‘[e]ven a “big bang” needs a “big banger”‘ and ‘Science has NO answer for this because it is by the Word of God that the world was formed.’ SS supporters should write to newspapers pointing out that no transitional fossils have ever been found [this is patently false, by the way] and that ID is being ’supported by more and more scientists’.

In the meantime, the ‘Catalyst’ poll began to move steadily in favour of the ‘Yes, ID should be taught in science classes’ position. Each half hour or so, ‘yes’ gained a percentage point, until about mid-afternoon when it stood at 34% (compared with 25-26% early on Friday morning). Then, disaster struck the ID cause, a crestfallen Stokes reporting that:

The ABC Catalyst program has pulled the web vote on Intelligent Design!

Sorry if you missed out. We might have been gaining ground too fast.

Yes 34%
No 66%
9357 votes counted

Does anyone know how long these votes are usually up for?

While anyone is free to vote in online polls, the caveat to which I referred earlier relates to the possibility of multiple voting. While some polls go to reasonable lengths to minimise the possibility of this occurring, I have never found one that could not be ‘broken’ inside a minute or so; and as someone not a million kilometres from this website will assure you, I am no computer whiz. The ‘Catalyst’ poll seems to have been a particularly easy target in this respect. I think that all these polls should carry advice similar to that provided by the Age, along the lines that the voters are self-selected, the results are in no sense scientific and that the voting process is less than completely secure.

Of course, none of this is to imply that Salt Shakers or any other Religious Right group condones or promotes multiple voting in online polls. Well, they wouldn’t, would they, being Christians and moral and all?

But if you notice this pattern taking place in future polls, and it bothers you, why not think about organising a voting bloc of your own?

Filed in: Christian Right, Creationism