Survey With Leftist Ties Sent To Local Poll Workers By Shelby County Prior To Election Day

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The Tennessee Conservative [By Adelia Kirchner] –

On October 30^th, just six days before the Presidential Election, multiple Shelby County residents received an email asking them to take a short survey on election safety.

This survey wasn’t just for any Shelby County residents though, it was specifically for those who had signed up to work the local election polls on Election Day.

“I along with [two other poll workers] work Election Day voting,” our source explained. “All three of us work at different locations, precincts, and I got a group text from them and they were like, ‘Did you see this e-email? It was really weird.’”

The email was sent from Shelby County’s Dianna George and read as follows:

“Hello All, Our office has agreed to distribute a short survey being conducted by CivicPulse, a national nonprofit dedicated to generating publicly available data and research for local and state governments.

The purpose of the survey is to understand how election workers are feeling about their safety and the safety of voters as Election Day approaches.

This survey is confidential and should take approximately five minutes to complete.”

Our source did not take the survey and decided to contact her recruiter to see if the survey had actually been sent out by the Shelby County Election Commission. 

“When I called my recruiter, she did indicate that they had sent it,” our source stated. “I don’t know how the connection came and if they went to other counties or other states or cities trying to do this.”

“I was kind of intrigued with it because I thought, well if they’re doing this all over the country, are they just targeting blue cities and working from that aspect?” she said.

The other two poll workers did take the survey and told our source that you didn’t have to give the survey an email address and, “It was like they were trying to instill fear in the poll workers so maybe they wouldn’t show up […] trying to make them think it was gonna be a violent election day kind of a thing.”

“I guess they assume since Shelby County is such a democratic city, that they wanted to get their thoughts,” our source said as she thought through the situation.

The survey in question was conducted by an organization called CivicPulse which defines itself as a non-profit, nonpartisan research organization “dedicated to enhancing local and state government in the US by conducting representative surveys of public officials, producing actionable research, and facilitating practitioner-researcher dialogue.”

Founded in 2018, the “nonpartisan” research organization consists of only 2-10 employees and is based out of Rochester, New York, according to their LinkedIn page.

Some of the recent funders and partners listed on CivicPulse’s website include the Carnegie Corporation of New York (“a foundation for a stronger democracy”), The Atlas, QualtricsXM, NewCities, Blue Shield of California Foundation, the Brennan Center for Justice, AAPI Data, Route Fifty, Stanford University’s The Bill Lane Center for the American West and Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative.

“I pulled them up and I saw all these people that were funders of this thing,” stated our source, “and Princeton was one of them. So it just really kind of concerned me that all this is still going on way in the background. I knew that it was and it would be, but you know.”

It doesn’t require much digging to figure out which way the majority of these organizations lean on the political spectrum. 

The Bridging Divides Initiative website, for example, recently promoted an event titled “Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right” which took place at its parent entity, Princeton University, on Tuesday, November 12^th.

“Political violence, the spread of conspiracy theories, and the erosion of trust in our democracy. The signs of growing far-right extremism are all around us,” the event description begins.

The lecture on “white nationalist recruitment tactics” and navigating challenges in the “post-election period” was given by Professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University, who published a book with the lecture’s title back in 2020. 

This was part of a lecture series, sponsored by Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) and The Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, on “Conflict, Violence, and Democratic Politics in the U.S. and Abroad.”

Other posts promoted by the Bridging Divides Initiative include the “New Media Guide for Covering Political Violence Risks During the Election,” “Princeton University, NJ Advance Media to cohost panel on extremism in N.J.” and “The Women Election Officials Risking Violence to Count Votes.”

The Bridging Divides Initiative is “a non-partisan research initiative that tracks and mitigates political violence in the United States,” according to their website.

CivicPulse’s sponsors and partners are not the only ones who seem to be a bit left-leaning and focused on political violence.

CivicPulse itself uses its survey results to write headlines like “In their own words: Election officials on addressing distrust and fears of violence.”

The question isn’t really, what polls or surveys will use your opinion to fit a narrative, because they all will. That’s what surveys and statistics are for right? 

Instead the question to keep in mind is probably more along the lines of, which narrative are you okay with someone using your opinion to promote, if any? 

“They’re still out there trying to drum up hate and division that we don’t need and that is not real,” our source concluded.

About the Author: Adelia Kirchner is a Tennessee resident and reporter for the Tennessee Conservative. Currently the host of Subtle Rampage Podcast, she has also worked for the South Dakota State Legislature and interned for Senator Bill Hagerty’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee. You can reach Adelia at adelia@tennesseeconservativenews.com.