See who the leaders are in the Journal-World poll of the six finalists for the vacant Lawrence City Commission seat

photo by: Nick Krug

The six finalists for the Lawrence City Commission vacancy are, in alphabetical order, from left, Lisa Larsen, Scott Morgan, Joe O’Brien, Terry Riordan, David Schauner and Karl Watson.

When it comes to filling the vacant seat on the Lawrence City Commission, a pair of past elected officials seem to have captured the attention of Lawrence residents, according to a new poll of 1,000 registered voters in the city.

Former City Commissioner Terry Riordan and former school board member Scott Morgan were the two candidates who received the most support in the poll, which was conducted by the Journal-World through Google Consumer Surveys. The poll isn’t an exact scientific sample of all of Lawrence’s population, but scientific sampling was done to collect the results. Margins of error for the individual results range from about 1.6 percent to 2.9 percent, and Google Consumer Surveys has certified the results as being statistically significant to a 95 percent confidence level, meaning if the poll was conducted 100 times, Riordan would come out on top 95 times.

Now, none of this means that Riordan and Morgan are the two front runners for the position. That’s because there won’t be a public election to fill the seat. Instead, the four remaining city commissioners will vote on their favorite candidates at the commission’s Oct. 6 meeting. In case you have forgotten, commissioners are filling the seat left vacant by Jeremy Farmer, who resigned after a host of financial concerns developed around his previous tenure as executive director of Just Food.

Despite the fact voters won’t be deciding this, the Journal-World thought it would be an interesting exercise to poll registered voters on their thoughts nonetheless. Here’s what we found when we asked 1,031 registered voters the following question: “The Lawrence City Commission has named six finalists to replace Jeremy Farmer on the commission. Who would be your choice?”

• Terry Riordan: 32.3 percent

• Scott Morgan: 27.6 percent

• Lisa Ann Larsen: 19.3 percent

• Joe O’Brien: 7.7 percent

• David Schauner: 7.3 percent

• Karl Watson: 5.8 percent

It is tough to say what these poll results mean at the moment. It could be that respondents have made some decisions based off the issues, or it could be more of a name-recognition factor at this point. Riordan and Morgan are the two finalists who have been in the news most often most recently.

Riordan finished a two-year term on the commission in April, but lost a re-election bid. He finished a distant fourth among six candidates in the general election. Morgan was on the school board as recently as 2011, and he ran for Kansas secretary of state in 2014. But he lost in the Republican primary to Kris Kobach.

Being a former elected official didn’t guarantee success in the poll. David Schauner served on the City Commission from 2003 to 2007, but he finished fifth in the poll and registered in the single digits. Though, if these results were mainly about name recognition, he probably has less of it because it has been awhile since his name has been in the news on a regular basis.

Riordan’s candidacy has been an interesting one to follow. There have been a significant number of supporters who say he should get the appointment because he finished fourth in the most recent election. Supporters say since the top three in that election won a seat on the commission, Riordan is rightfully next in line. I have heard opponents, however, say Riordan shouldn’t be selected because voters had the chance to elect him in April and chose not to do so.

Both positions seem a bit unfair to me. When people vote for somebody, they are choosing from a slate of candidates. Unless the slate of candidates is exactly the same, it doesn’t seem too relevant what the results of the last election were. You start the process over and determine who is best among those on the ballot now. Just because you lost an election a few months ago doesn’t mean you aren’t the best choice out of today’s slate. Conversely, just because you were runner-up a few months ago doesn’t mean you are the best among those who now are vying for the spot.

I’ll be interested to see if public opinion changes as the candidates are asked to explain their positions more thoroughly. J-W City Hall reporter Nikki Wentling will have a more in-depth look at each of the candidates in tomorrow’s Journal-World and on LJWorld.com. City commissioners at a special meeting on Thursday will interview their list of finalists, which may include all six candidates, or commissioners can choose to narrow the list prior to the interviews. On Oct. 6, commissioners will vote to fill the vacant term, which runs until January 2018.

I like numbers, so I suspect we’ll do another poll to see if people’s opinions change any as they learn more.

• Some of you may be interested in how we conducted this poll. Users of LJWorld and KUsports.com are familiar with the survey questions that sometimes pop up before you gain access to an article on the websites. Those are surveys run by Google Consumer Surveys, and, as a partners, we here at the J-W have the ability to create our own local surveys.

I know what some of you are thinking: You just click a name as quickly as you can to get done with the survey and on to the article. But it is pretty clear that these results are more significant than that. The reason I say so is because the list of six candidates did not appear in the same order for every person who took the survey. The list was randomized, so if people were just clicking on a random name, it doesn’t seem that Riordan and Morgan would have gotten the response levels they did.

Plus, if people really were just trying to get done with the survey, they probably were smart enough to answer ‘no’ to the first question that was asked, which was inquiring whether you are a registered voter in Lawrence. If you answered no, you weren’t asked the second question. About 3,000 people answered ‘no’ to that question. But a little more than 1,000 people answered ‘yes,’ and the responses from those people produced these survey results.

Bottom line, I think this is a far more accurate way of polling people than what the Journal-World has done in the past. Previously, we used to have online polls where anybody and everybody could vote and state their opinion. It was possible for people to vote more than once, and it was possible for people to call their friends and tell them to vote too.

The Google Consumer Surveys don’t work that way. You either get presented the question when you log onto our websites, or you don’t. In other words, the survey selects you. You don’t select the survey.

Mechanisms also are in place so that multiple votes from the same computer IP address aren’t allowed. Google’s technology also does its best to find a representative sample of respondents. It is no surprise that Google knows a lot about you based on your web searching history. It uses that information and the location of your IP address to “infer” a lot of demographic information about you. Those inferred demographics are used to try to create a representative sample.

The responses from this survey, though, did not produce what we would consider a fully representative sample. We had some success in the age category in terms of age ranges, but the survey was more heavily-weighted toward male respondents than the population as a whole would have been.

So, make whatever you want of the results, but the idea of locally produced surveys on Lawrence issues has piqued my interest. We may make a regular feature out of it. Would readers be interested in getting feedback on how people feel about a “road diet” for portions of Kasold Drive? Or whether people think the City Commission should approve a proposed retail development south of the South Lawrence Trafficway? Or maybe thoughts on Kris Kobach and his voter registration policies? The list of interesting survey questions is long.

I certainly don’t want to help create a community where all decisions are made based off of whatever is polling well. Polls are imperfect, and even when they are accurate, the general public can make some awful decisions. (See 1980s hairstyles, excluding my mullet, of course.) But getting more information about how Lawrence residents are thinking seems valuable.

So, keep your eyes open — and your clicking finger limber — for more local surveys.