So I just got push polled on the Ohio Payday Loan Referendum. Kinda hysterical, until it got to be more than 3 minutes long. Which is my personal time limit for confusing the hey-nonny-nonny out of push pollsters.
I’m a sucker for polls. I like being asked my opinion, an, if the person on the other end of the phone has a nice voice, I usually find the experience very soothing. It’s like free therapy. Well, micro-therapy, anyway.
But push polling is, well… you know. Obnoxious. They don’t really want my opinion. They want me to change my mind. This one went from bad to funny to sad pretty quickly.
Last year, the governor and Ohio lawmakers approved HB 545, a bill that caps the Ohio payday loan industry’s interest rate at 28%. The previous cap was 391%, which works out to $15 per $100 on a two-week loan. Obviously, the payday loan industry didn’t like that so much, and so have a veto referendum coming up in November. It’s one of those complicated things to get clear with voters: Vote “yes” on the veto in order to say “no” to saying “yes” to saying “no” to usury. Hunh? Yeah, that’s right. A “yes” vote means that you are for being against being for being against super-high interest loans. As Kung-Fu Panda says, “Ske-doosh.”
Early on in the call, after establishing that I vote, the pollster asked me, “Do you think that you are capable of making your own financial decisions?” I answered, “Yes.” OK. Who wouldn’t? Then she asked, “Do you think that other people are capable of making their own financial decisions?”
I asked if there was another answer besides “Yes” or “No.” An answer like, “Some people. But not the ones in charge of the mortgage industry, the federal deficit or funding for Ohio public education.” Or, “Some people, but not people who buy lottery tickets.” She was not amused, and we went with “Yes.”
Then it became clear… “Do you think that a person should be able to get a short-term loan of $100 for a service fee of $15?”
Ah-ha. I’d heard enough about this issue to know where we were standing at this point. I also knew, from the way those questions had been tossed out, that it was a push poll. So… at that point, my goal is to get out quickly, but possibly confuse their system a bit. I don’t like push polling, and endeavor to waste their time a little, up to the point where it’s not any fun for me.
I won’t go into details, but my answers were all over the place. I said, for example, that “saving 6,000 Ohio jobs” wasn’t a reason why I’d vote for the veto. But I said that keeping the government from “creating lists of who gets what kind of loans” was a reason I’d veto it.
Don’t know why. Just went for the random thing.
I hate push polling. Did I mention that? Mostly because they don’t care what I think, just what they do.
Would it change your vote about the upcoming election if you knew that John McCain was a cross-dressing alien from the planet Clam?
Were you pushed into ‘voting no’ on issue 5? The questions they asked seemed to be typical of the misleading statements the payday lobby is already using to convince Ohio voters they need 391% interest. For one, 6,000 jobs aren’t at stake – HB 545 doesn’t ban payday lending, it merely caps interest rates at 28% APR. I bet the caller also didn’t mention the fact that over 1,000 of the 1,600 storefronts in Ohio have already applied for new licenses to operate under the new law.
Additionally, no list is kept by the government of who gets what kind of loans. What is a database that will tell payday lenders how many outstanding loans a person has, so that they can actually loan according to a person’s ability to repay (something that would rather not do). This will help end the debt trap for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans.
At any rate, I’m sure the push poll didn’t mention the APR of Ohio’s payday loans: 391% interest. That kind of number would change people’s minds.
Vote yes on issue 5!
Tim — Now I’m confused (more) [again]. I thought issue 5 was the payday loan industry’s attempt to get us to turn back the original bill.
I want to vote against 391% interest, but quadruple semi-negatives confuse me.
Andy,
I apologize. You are right – issue 5 is the industry’s attempt to overturn the most important part of the bill – the rate cap! If you want to vote against 391% interest – you need to vote YES on ISSUE 5! It sounds counterintuitive to vote yes to say no to something, but that’s what the Ohio Ballot Board agreed to.
So, vote yes on issue 5! http://www.yesonissue5.com
Like I said. Confusing.
Vote yes to vote no to retain the yes that said no to lenders saying yes.
You push the middle valve down…
But the payday loan people are running a helluva campaign. I saw a couple of them outside my library urging people to vote no and “SAVE OHIO JOBS” (like it said on their t-shirts). No thanks, I don’t want to save the jobs of usurious jerks.