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A poll making its way to residents around San Mateo County is not affiliated with the county, officials said.
Over the last month, a randomly selected pool of residents received invitations via text or email to complete a survey about “important issues in San Mateo County.” The survey was sent from the Opinion Research Team of McGuire Research Services, an independent opinion research firm.
While McGuire uses an email address that includes the words San Mateo County, it is not affiliated with San Mateo County or the elections office, according to officials.
When contacted by the Pulse for access to view the survey, McGuire said that it was only available to a randomly selected group of residents.
Responses are confidential and will be used “for research purposes only,” according to the survey email from McGuire. It’s unclear who sponsored the survey or what research the information will be used for.
In the survey, voters were asked to share their opinions on ballot measures such as the county Emergency/Climate Change Preparedness and Mitigation Measure. Participants were asked to rank the degree to which certain arguments affected their likelihood of supporting the measure.
According to the county Registration & Elections Division, organizations can purchase voter registration contact information and information about which elections voters participated in.
The county is required to provide this information “to any candidate for federal, state, or local office, to any committee for or against any initiative or referendum measure for which legal publication is made, and to any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, or political purposes, or for governmental purposes.”
Residents’ votes are confidential and protected by the Voter Bill of Rights.
McGuire Research is based out of Las Vegas, Nevada. They have received a total of 31 complaints over the past three years on their Better Business Bureau page.
