https://n2v.paloaltoonline.com/square/print/2020/12/03/palo-alto-election-study-scam


Town Square

Palo Alto Election Study (scam?)

Original post made by localvoter, Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on Dec 3, 2020

I received an email today with the subject line 'Palo Alto Voter Poll'. The sender's name is just Palo Alto City Council Election Study, and the email is paccelectionstudy@gmail.com. I'll just paste their short message here:

"Dear Palo Alto voters,

We need your help! As part of an ongoing student-run study on voting and elections in Palo Alto, we’re inviting you to participate in a short (3 minute) survey about the recent City Council election. If you have the time to spare, we'd really appreciate your contribution - projects like this can't happen without engaged citizens like you!

To take the survey, please fill out the Google Form below, and we'll send you the results when the study is over!

Thank you for your time and we hope you'll join us in this project.

Best,

Palo Alto Election Study Team"
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None of the above indicates an author, institution, organization or school of any kind. The email then displays an embedded Google form that asks me, bewilderingly, to

1) provide my email address so that I 'can be sent the results of the poll'

2) who I voted for!

3+) various questions about the issues that matter most, what kind of advertising reached and affected me, who I saw digital ads for, who I received mail from, and a few other questions.

This is extremely shady. I think only two or three candidates have my email address (and only one of them got it from me, instead of presumably purchasing it...). It's hard to interpret this other than a mendacious fishing expedition to save money on a political advertising consultancy and to build a voting history database, disguised as 'students'. Or, mea culpa, it is actually a student-run study, and these students have no adult supervision whatsoever. Did anyone else receive this email? Can you imagine sharing who you voted for with this ridiculous appeal?

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