HD39 ‘Push’ Poll Libels Candidate Peterson By Messaging Voters, Claiming That She’d Been Fired

In the now on-going saga of candidate Ronda Peterson running for a seat in HD39, I received a text message after yesterday’s article publication from Peterson, who sent me a screenshot of a candidate ‘push’ poll she received from a friend dated November 27th.

Here are a couple screenshots Peterson took of the poll.

NOTE: This text says “Ronda Peterson WAS removed…” from her position, but it does NOT SAY from what school system she was fired. This kind of a poll hopes to trap uneducated voters into NOT paying attention to the fact that the name of the school from which Ronda was presumably fired IS NOT LISTED, hoping that readers will tend to believe it’s the school where she is currently employed. As the Ballotpedia definition for push polling points out, this is VERY, VERY bad stuff.

Here’s why:

Yup, not only did someone BELIEVE the lie in the push poll, that person in turn SPREAD THE LIE on her Facebook page (and most probably other places) to influence other people about her candidacy.

Ronda asked Edmond Public Schools Administration to make a public statement – not on her behalf as a candidate – but about her employment status. Though Peterson has been employed with Edmond Public Schools for 22 years, she was refused on grounds that EPS policy prevents them from commenting on an employee’s employment status.

She also tried to expose the lie of the poll by taking a picture of herself on her bus with a paper showing the current date – which she posted to her Facebook page – but that was about all she could do to tamp down the nonsense.

So…is push polling legal? What about the fact that it libeled Peterson?

Yes, push polling is legal, and many people use it in political campaigns to try and ‘push’ their candidate – and not just political consultants. In fact, ANYONE could do a push poll, so where this particular libelous push poll came from is a complete mystery without some kind of lead back to the company from which it was generated. The phone number used for this poll has a DC area code and is probably Google in origin – there’s no way to tell without paying a reverse look-up service and even then the odds aren’t great of actually determining anything. The “State Election Research” title comes up in no internet search I performed, so it’s likely just a phrase used as an appeal to authority – again, to influence unsuspecting voters.

Libel on the other hand is illegal – but only if it can be proved in a court of law. Here’s the problem, more than likely it can’t and the legal process to try and prove it is quite expensive.

So what happens to candidates like Peterson who find themselves stuck at the end of this form of campaigning? Nothing. Bupkis. Nada. Zilch. You get the idea.

This gross practice needs to be exposed so voters who want to know what’s going on with the text messages they get – usually unwanted – on their cell phones, can be assured that their spidey senses are right – it’s a practice to try to trick them, not inform them.

But then, this is why I try to expose Dark Money where and when I can. It gives unfair advantage to whomever uses it for their election, by funneling tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of dollars into local races. This kind of money makes it nearly impossible for people who really want to run to help their community but have little means to mount a 100 thousand dollar political campaign, to run and become elected. The Founders of this country envisioned ‘citizen legislators‘ making decisions for the betterment of their states and their country, not people backed by large amounts of cash coming in from outside the district to seat a candidate whose interests then don’t really lie in the district to which he/she was elected.

Unfortunately, today, a large portion of Oklahomans don’t vote – in fact, in 2020, just over half of eligible voters actually voted Oklahoma’s elections – and of those half who do, few take time to really research candidates or issues. Often, these voters get their information from a push poll, a mailer, or an electronic ad and political consultants know that – it makes their job easy.

Consequently, if interested Oklahomans are going to ever see real change in Oklahoma’s elections, PEOPLE IN OKLAHOMA NOT ONLY HAVE TO VOTE – BUT BE INFORMED VOTERS.