Reply #36: That Would Be True, Ma'am

[The Magistrate]

We were supposed to station ourselves outside the door to the place, and to ask voters who turned in one direction on leaving the door to respind, but it was not possible to do this, as the exit was down a stair alongside a wall, and everyone had to go one way from there to reach the street a good distance off. We settled for asking every other person who exited, as this seemed to preserve the intent of the directive. It seems likely to me, the world being what it is, that any general directive must have been a similarly poor fit with many actual places of activity.

Disregard of instructions entirely may well have occured, though. It is not a profession, after all, and the people employed for the task frequently supplied by temporary agencies. My comments are not so much in support of the specifics of the article, but only relating to the basic proposition that persons who voted one way or another may have been more or less likely to answer the questions. My own experience leads me to suspect that may be so, as it certainly seemed to be so in that particular election.