Politicians, Privacy, and the Polls

Abstract

A mericans are paying closer attention to public opinion polls and federal censuses and relying increasingly upon them in making important decisions. During the recent election campaign, for example, the League of Women Voters chose the participants in the Presidential debates on the basis of their standings in the public opinion polls-a highly controversial and questionable use of those polls. Similarly, the allocation of federal and state funds on the basis of population figures from the federal censuses has led to court battles over such issues as undercounting in urban areas and the inclusion or exclusion of undocumented aliens in the census totals. The increasing dependence on public opinion polls and federal censuses raises questions about the rights of citizens who are the subjects of these inquiries. In the post-Watergate atmosphere of suspicion, Americans are becoming more reluctant to allow their privacy to be invaded by pollsters and census takers. There is also heightened anxiety about confidentialityespecially the fear that information supposedly gathered for one specific purpose is being used for other purposes and stored in secret, centralized computer files. Some social scientists have written about the issues of privacy and confidentiality in gathering, storing, and disseminating data from surveys and censuses. But because their work has been scattered