Now that the Sept. 12 Preliminary Election Ballot is set, who do you support for Newton’s next mayor?
Vote in our poll and then explain your choice in the comments section.
[polldaddy poll=”9797496″]
VILLAGE 14 POLL: Who should be Newton’s next mayor?
by Greg Reibman | Jul 28, 2017 | Mayor's race | 26 comments
These polls are literally fake news.
Giving people a forum to comment on who they support makes complete sense, a poll that is wholly unscientific and does not control for repeat votes has no value.
Greg– please provide any justification for continuing to do these. No one else wants them. Respect the rest of V14 and stop.
Pretty sure it is just two people clearing their cookies and voting again, and again, and again.
How exactly do you know that Paul? Should we take a poll? :)
Here’s from another reader who doesn’t want these polls.
841 votes have been cast so far. That’s an impressive turnout…
Anyone who supports these polls, please write into the comments.
That should suffice, don’t you think?
Seriously don’t understand why you don’t take this criticism– made by many on V14– more seriously.
Read about random anchor bias and perhaps you’ll give it a second thought. A false poll result, manipulated by one or two people, may actually detract from the debate. These are worse than worthless.
Actually Paul I get a lot more complaints about guys like you who use the cloak of a pseudonym to post comments that are much nastier than they’d be if you revealed your true identity.
Just this week, one sitting city councilor and one candidate told me that you are one of the reasons they’re reluctant to participate here.
Greg
That has nothing to do with the fact that you are creating fake news by publishing unscientific polls.
Just don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn about it. Doesn’t make sense.
@Paul: Thanks for the P.S., I hope you do take it to heart because, unlike these polls, it’s true.
Some other comments:
1. I’m as frustrated as anyone that these polls get hijacked. But instead of asking us not to post polls, why not ask the folks who are sitting there clearing cookies and voting over and over and over again, to knock it off?
2. Even when these polls get hijacked, they tell me something. For example, it seems that the Amy Sangiolo campaign and/or her supporters have decided its foolish to engage in this charade and that there are probably more productive ways to spend their Friday. (Imagine how silly Fuller or Lennon would have looked if only their campaigns stuffed the ballot box!) It likely also tells me that Al Cecchinelli has some support, which I suspected was true since he’s been active locally for a long time. On the other hand, I’m skeptical about Woodward’s numbers because I’ve yet to meet anyone who knows him. And at the moment, Rich Saunders (with zero votes) must be at work. Mostly, I’m surprised there aren’t more undecideds. I know I’m undecided.
3. I see these polls as a conversation starter. Unfortunately this one has morphed into a conversation about the polls instead of the candidates. Folks reading this are free to change the conversation back to the candidates at any time. It would be especially great if supporters of the four non-councilor candidates could weigh in with reasons why we should take them seriously, something I haven’t heard yet.
4. I also think it’s useful to post this poll if for no other reason than to drive home the reminder that that this is the choice that’s before us in just a few weeks.
5. Finally, to be totally, totally honest here, the fact that this annoys Paul so much is kind of fun!
Oh and Paul, if you really don’t want to stifle conversation ask yourself each time you comment if you would write the exact same thing if you were publishing under your real name.
Better yet, switch to using your real name and this will be the last election poll I publish between now and Nov.7.
PS If your comment is real, I take it to heart. Shutting down conversation is not a good thing. I’ll look to do better.
But I do think its important to distinguish between posting things unnecessarily nasty and pointing out things that make people uncomfortable. Such as: certain parts of the city get more favorable treatment than others. If that’s what’s making CCs and candidates not post here, because they’re uncomfortable confronting topics like those, so be it, IMO.
Incognito!!
Years ago when people couldn’t scam the system, the polls were kind of interesting-not informative, but whatever. Now just about everyone knows how to vote as many times as one wishes. All it takes is the time to sit at a computer, press the right buttons, and vote over and over and over.. .
I remember one night closing my computer at 11pm with a poll showing a candidate with 25-30 votes and opening it up at 7am and he had 250 votes. Time for the polls to go.
I’ll go out on a limb here and say I think the polls are both fun and interesting. How many people would actually take the time to screw with an unscientific poll? I can only think of a few.
To be fake, it would have taken lead to a conclusion but it’s just a bit of internet fun. I wonder who is the most annoyed by them and could it be they are taking them too seriously.
If councilors or candidates are too timid to tackle the opinions of V14 bloggers, I’m not sure they’re up to being in office.
I’m mostly annoyed by Paul’s repetition of his being annoyed.
Gauntlet. Thrown.
OK I’ll come clean. I start my day with Morning Joe and V 14 so I voted for Ruthanne Fuller early this morning. These polls are entertaining but have no real credibility…. just an opportunity to see which campaign has their pulse on V14 posts & which campaign can motivate their interns, supporters and volunteers within a 12 hour news cycle to get enough votes to push their candidate ahead. For me it shows more about campaign organization & out reach than actual support because of the multiple voting capabilities…. but with that being said if I knew what a cookie was & how to clear it to vote more often I would!
#Fuller4Mayor
Vision, leadership & effective management
Al Cecchinelli is the only candidate here who has a net worth below $1 Million. He speaks for the people.
@Bob: Do you know that for a fact? Very little seems to be known about the non-councilor candidates.
I’m okay with the polls, and with people making use of them fairly.
I’m very disappointed that Fuller, Lennon and Sangiolo dodged the
question of whether city employees
should be switched into the GIC for their health care coverage.
Not a good sign that any of these
candidates has the intestinal fortitude
to get a grip on the city’s finances.
Paul G, when did that question come up?? Thats interesting.
@Paul: I didn’t think I dodged the question. I thought I answered it. I’m not in favor of moving our workers into the GIC at this point in time and without getting our employees on board. People tend to forget that our workers are REAL PEOPLE – men and women who make our City as desirable as it is and keep our property values up. They are our teachers who tireless educate our kids and are held back because of requirements to teach to the test; they are our police and firefighters who keep our community safe; they are the men and women in DPW and Engineering who try, with limited funding, to get our roads and sewers and water lines repaired and maintained; the folks in Parks and Rec – who do their best to upkeep our parks and playgrounds and provide programming for our youth and seniors, the folks in our library – which has one of the highest circulation stats in our State. All of our workers need to be treated with dignity and respect. As Mayor, will I negotiate hard with our Unions – absolutely – but that doesn’t mean we summarily dismiss concerns about entering the state’s GIC. And, the fact that we were not in the GIC this past year, enabled the City to make up a $2.5 million deficit the School Department was facing. While I don’t believe in one-time funding for on-going expenses – it did allow the City to have the flexibility to fill that gap.
Paul G – Do you know about the recent changes in the GIC that make it a less attractive option for the city? There’s a reason why only 39 communities out of 351 have chosen to join and several have dropped out. No doubt, the candidates are keeping a close eye on it and will make thoughtful decisions based on whether this program is in the best interest of the city as we move into the future.
As an FYI, I will not personally benefit from any health care program.
@Bob Gerald, how do you know this? Al has barely any internet presence other than his open Facebook page and sparse LinkedIn page, so I don’t know how anyone can really say anything one way or another about that candidate! As for him being the only candidate that is for the people, I would argue that Scott Lennon is as well. He lives in a small house in Nonantum, so he is far more in touch with the less-elite of Newton (like myself) than someone like Ruthanne Fuller who lives in an enormous house in CH. All that said, I’m undecided.
My apologies if this has been covered previously. In that case, just skip it after the first sentence below.
If this is important enough to anyone; it would not take too much coding for the site administrator to capture & log the incoming IP address and possibly even the Mac address of each vote – that database can then be used to approximate how many unique users voted for each candidate. Household members using the same IP, which are legit votes, would skew it a bit, but not enough to invalidate the overall results for the high vote-getters. Similarly, votes will come in from persons at work where the IP’s get re-routed internally in the subnet and all show up as the same origin. You can usually identify the organization, so that gives you some insight into those votes – for instance, you could tell how many votes came from networks owned by the city of Newton and how those votes were split between the candidates.
If the site administrator is not interested in this extra work they could just use canned third party software, like Survey Monkey that already has tracking capabilities built in.
Requiring users to log-in also solves the problem, but would greatly lessen the number of participants and spoil the fun.
Then there are people like myself who could flood the poll with a few thousand autobot spoofed IP’s and unique user accounts, but I can’t imagine anyone doing that.
My take is that the results at the high end for Lennon and Fuller are probably fairly representative of the support from V14 users, but not necessarily of the wider community of voters in Newton. Amy’s count is likely underrepresented and (unfortunately, my numbers are accurate)
My sense, from the anecdotal sample of voters I have talked to while campaigning is that the Lennon / Fuller race is fairly close at this stage. Casual voters, whose numbers are larger than the hard-core followers are just now starting to pay attention and the upcoming forums could sway the vote for any of the three top tier serious contenders.
moi; Enjoy the fun, take the poll with its current flaws for what it is worth (and btw – that value is not zero) and move on to more substantive threads and posts.
Scott Lennon is the best qualified candidate for Mayor.
@Tom
There was a front page article in the TAB either this week or last about the GIC. The three main mayoral candidates were asked about their support or lack thereof for moving more city employees over into the GIC.
@ Amy-
Thank you for a more direct and firm answer here than I believe you had in the TAB article.
@Jane-
No I’m not aware of these changes.
I’ll need to learn more about it obviously. I will endeavor to do so.
Thanks
The tax paying residents of Newton are REAL PEOPLE too. We have financial burdens
– health care costs
– college tuitions
– stagnant wage growth
– ever increasing property taxes
If Neqton doesn’t get its long term fiscal house in order it’s going to either force out today’s residents or sacrifices in our own health care/finances as city pensions should rightly be considered as guaranteed promise