# What are your ideas to run a national, non-binding referendum on the issues? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 14, 2026, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339 "2026-08-14T15:34:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/21 "2026-08-15T09:12:19Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > IRL and on these boards, I hear a lot of frustration that their voices aren’t being heard. That primaries are controlled by the parties. That candidates are dominated by donors. I hear frustration that wedge issues are distracting from more important issues. > > The idea for this survey is counter some of that frustration. Your idea to counter that frustration is to tell them they now get a fun little pretend vote that doesn’t actually count? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/22 "2026-08-15T11:33:58Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > > [@PhillyGuy](#): > > > > A forced yes/no answer is the opposite of active listening. > > It’s an optional survey; no one is forced to respond. And survey questions don’t have to be yes/no. Multiple choice, with an option to skip questions, also is not active listening. > [@CaveMike](#): > > I hear a lot of frustration that their voices aren’t being heard. It is hard to distinguish being heard from having what you want done. The dictatorial strongman of the United States knows he is widely hated. I suppose he looks at polls. He sometimes takes phone calls from reporters who then describe his statements as baseless. So? Having referendums be non-binding is a recipe for more complaints about the people not being heard. The California model of binding referendums is what would mean that the people, in all their contradictory impulses, were being heard. At least with the California system, there is some discipline because a state must run a more or less balanced budget. What if one non-binding referenda says to establish universal health insurance paid for by the government with no copays or pre-certs, and another says to reduce taxes across the board by twenty percent? Listen or ignore? > [@CaveMike](#): > > That primaries are controlled by the parties. I am missing that. Anyone who can get the signatures needed can run. If by “the party”, one means previously elected officials, Trump would not have become president if the party was in control. > [@CaveMike](#): > > I hear frustration that wedge issues are distracting from more important issues. > > The idea for this survey is counter some of that frustration. What is to stop the survey questions being on wedge issues? ---
**Author:** ![Heracles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heracles/32/487_2.png) [@Heracles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heracles)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/23 "2026-08-15T11:50:35Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > The other common option I see these days, that is probably cost effective is setting up a mass-text message poll. For me though, 99% of the time I just click “message is spam” and move on. But the costs are probably low, and since our society is increasingly smart-device dependent, would get your information out to a very wide range of people without as much website based self-segregation. You’re proposing mass, _unsolicited SMS texts_ as a vehicle for opinion polls? You’ll certainly receive the opinion that you should stop texting. Some naïve or very lonely people will respond to the actual questions. I don’t see how that gives a high-quality picture of the general public’s opinion. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/24 "2026-08-15T16:47:16Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > What exactly do you want to know, and what are you going to do with the information? Good points, thanks @bengangmo. I think there’s value in first prioritizing issues; understanding and amassing data about what voters currently care about the most. Being able to say “you ranked gas and electricity costs as your highest priority and trans-athletes in professional sports as your lowest, I’m going to take this to heart and focus my time in the campaign addressing your high priorities”. Or similarly if it’s the Dem party doing the survey “these are the issues we will use for our debates”. Then secondly, understanding what are acceptable ways to address each issue. > [@bengangmo](#): > > does it need to be a discrete thing only happening at election time? > What if it could be done continuously? A real-time or continuous survey could be really useful, but at this stage it would be a challenge to get a single, comprehensive survey complete. If a discrete survey proved useful, then it might evolve into a continuous one. > [@bengangmo](#): > > In both NZ and Singapore, there is the ability to login to government services via a national ID number This technique might be the only way to prevent widespread fraud. It’s just such a huge gap in friction between “Internet survey” and “national login” that I was hoping there would be something more accessible. I was also hoping for a solution that doesn’t require the government to implement – a survey that could be run by a private entity. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/25 "2026-08-15T16:55:03Z")
> [@Heracles](#): > > You’ll certainly receive the opinion that you should stop texting. @ParallelLines acknowledged this in their post: > For me though, 99% of the time I just click “message is spam” and move on. My OP is “brainstorm technical approaches to implement a better Internet survey”. The point of brainstorming is to get a lot of ideas out quickly and not to evaluate them until the end. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/26 "2026-08-15T17:03:07Z")
@PhillyGuy what point are you trying to make? That such a survey as I described would not be useful? It’s a fair point and most of the responses seem to be making this same point. But let’s pretend for a bit that a survey _could_ be useful. How could it be implemented? ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/27 "2026-08-15T17:41:46Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > I was also hoping for a solution that doesn’t require the government to implement – a survey that could be run by a private entity. If the idea to to find out priorities, I think the Pew polling is already high quality. See: > **[Most important issues facing the US 2009-2026](https://yougov.com/en-us/trackers/most-important-issues-facing-the-us?period=3m)** > > Which of these is the most important issue for you? Please note the following answer options were recoded: The environment \> Climate change and the environment, Foreign policy \> National security and foreign policy, The economy \> Jobs and the... Right now, it seems that inflation is by far the number one issue among registered American voters. We are talking here about an inflation rate of 3.4 percent: > **[United States Inflation Rate](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi)** > > Inflation Rate in the United States decreased to 3.40 percent in July from 3.50 percent in June of 2026. This page provides - United States Inflation Rate - actual values, historical data, forecast, chart, statistics, economic calendar and news. Tens of millions without health insurance? Lack of good jobs? Authoritarian presidency? Climate? War? Nope. 3.4 percent inflation is number one by far. But to answer your question a bit more directly: Long ago when in college, I had a wonderful fun job where I interviewed parents, one-on-one, to rank their concerns regarding the Philadelphia public schools. My training, which I followed, was to patiently ask for this without preset categories, and without any judgement on my part. Then I spent an hour or two asking them to elaborate what they meant by each concern. This led to creation of a final priority list that tended to be longer and different from the initial one. So it was a little like a focus group except that the respondent, if I did my job correctly, could not be influenced by others. I do not know that changing government policy, to meet the deep desires of parents, surfaced in such a process, would really make the schools better. However, if you really want to give the public what it wants, good and hard, that sort of process could work. P.S. I do not remember what the parents actually said. ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/28 "2026-08-15T18:20:37Z")
@CaveMike already did a fine job of pointing out my own concerns with the efficacy. An additional point, going from the OP, was to keep costs down - and that’s another reason why I brought it up as a possibility. I agree though with your concerns @Heracles: it’s not a great solution. Heck, it’s probably not even a good solution. But going back to the OP, we’ve got 4 goals (not in any order) Minimize Friction - this is low effort if it’s a binary or even multiple choice option on a phone. Constrain Responses - One response per person, and while I did concede that there are people with more than one phone, it’s more a rarity. Minimize abuse: +/- zero for this solution Minimize cost: Probably pretty low cost, which is why I got so many of the darn things during primaries over the last few months. Given those four goals in the OP, getting 3 out of four (to some degree at least) is probably decent. And give our “baseline” of an online survey, it’s probably a lot better on constrained responses, while still almost certainly being more expensive. 🤷 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/29 "2026-08-15T18:30:24Z")
When Musk gets his Neurolink planted in everybody’s heads, then a mass questionnaire will be simple to send out. I truly think nothing short of that is at all feasible. The U.S. system isn’t set up for anything like this. National public polling already does an excellent job of determining interest in issues. It also shows that while party affiliation used to have smaller effects on issues, today’s issues have wildly separate approvals from Republicans and Democrats, as if two different countries were being polled. Polling also shows that the exact wording of a question can make a huge difference in responses, a major reason why multiple polls asking multiple versions of a question should properly be analyzed to hone in on an answer, something impossible for a one-time referendum. > [@CaveMike](#): > > But let’s pretend for a bit that a survey _could_ be useful. You need to spell out how such a referendum could possibly be useful first. I don’t see where you have specified any reason for a gigantic effort like this other than somebody might want to know. Pollsters are having immense difficulties getting 1000-2500 random responders for their regular surveys. You want to increase that by several orders of magnitude to achieve exactly what? ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/30 "2026-08-15T18:44:54Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > Being able to say “you ranked gas and electricity costs as your highest priority and trans-athletes in professional sports as your lowest, I’m going to take this to heart and focus my time in the campaign addressing your high priorities”. I for one would prefer a candidate with a well-articulated platform of things they believe in and want to accomplish to one who says “Whatever this survey says you care about is what I believe”. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/31 "2026-08-15T19:52:45Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You need to spell out how such a referendum could possibly be useful first. Respectfully, why? My OP is a technical question: “brainstorm technical approaches to implement a better Internet survey”. I gave a use-case for a political survey and posted in P&E because that’s the application I’m interested in, but it’s orthogonal to the technical question. While I am interested in the insights why a political survey won’t work or wouldn’t be useful, I am a little discouraged that it dominated the discussion. It would be more insightful if the responses were “it won’t work for this reason, but what if we made this change?” * * * But I do respect that if I am asking for poster’s time and attention, then posters deserve a compelling reason why a widespread political survey could be useful. I have been thinking that the way we engage with politics and our expectations from our engagement has changed dramatically in the last thirty years. People have much stronger opinions and a wider set of issues. Even children have strong opinions. Web 2.0, Social Media, and streaming have raised the bar on the level of impact any one of us can have – or at least the appearance of impact. People are willing to engage more deeply, but expect to have more impact from that engagement. National election cycles are no longer cycles, they’re permanent; consider the length of the 2028 US presidential election thread and we haven’t ever had the midterms (this is not a criticism). A lot of time and energy is going into political discourse in-person and online year round, but the opportunities to connect that energy is mostly limited to discrete election days. With all of this in mind, I’ve been trying to brainstorm ways to bridge the gap. People have opinions, they want to be a part of the process, but the current options are limited to: volunteer, donate, and vote. One idea I have is the survey; increase engagement, listen to voters, understand their _current_ concerns, perhaps even include non-voters. The problem I see is that it is very hard technically to conduct such a survey and get meaningful results. Regardless where one stands on the political spectrum, the signal-to-noise ratio of political discourse has gotten low enough that I think it’s compromised voters’ decision-making process. I’m trying to think of novel ways to refocus voters to vote in their own interests again. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/32 "2026-08-15T20:05:42Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > “Whatever this survey says you care about is what I believe”. I never suggested this. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/33 "2026-08-15T20:43:43Z")
> [@bengangmo](#): > > In both NZ and Singapore, there is the ability to login to government services via a national ID number (like your social security number) with a password and 2FA. > It would be pretty easy to tag on a survey module to this - and with the advent of AI, collecting and analysing data is becoming easier and more accurate all of the time. This opens up the possibility, or at least the accusation, of the government tracing your responses back to you personally. The appearance as well as the fact of anonymity for the participant is essential for any kind of unbiased survey. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/34 "2026-08-15T21:28:13Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > The appearance as well as the fact of anonymity for the participant is essential for any kind of unbiased survey. I can see a little bias coming from some being afraid to say what they really think in front of their neighbors, but I think the bigger bias comes from pre-determined choices. Those choices are telling people what slots to put their thinking into. If you do not want bias, ask people their priorities without suggesting what the possibilities are. Politicians could do this with town halls. You also can do it with open ended questionnaires, except that then you are biasing in favor of the more literate. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339/35 "2026-08-15T21:33:14Z")
I’ll take a crack at a US state-wide survey: - the user fills out the survey online - at the end, they provide their name and current address - the survey is entered _provisionally_ - USPS mail a postcard with a QR code - the user scans the QR code to submit their results _officially_ This is kind of an inverse of the process to request a vote-by-mail ballot in the Illinois. It would require access to a database of residents and their addresses to verify before sending the postcard. There would also be standard fraud detection on the server-side to reduce the “leverage” of fraud. There could be options to specify aliases and past addresses or even alternative confirmation methods. It depends what info is available to the surveyor. I’m assuming here that any resident can fill out a survey, non-voters, children, non-permanent residents. Additional constraints would be needed to prevent these cases (if desired). I would guess the cost of the server infrastructure and postcards would be on the _order_ of $10M for Illinois with 12M residents. I left out the entire advertising and awareness portion, both the methods and cost. I haven’t really thought about that, but @ParallelLines was correct to include it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-your-ideas-to-run-a-national-non-binding-referendum-on-the-issues/1032339.md?page=1)