Sometimes you hate to draw attention to folks who do strange things during a campaign because it rewards them with attention that they might not otherwise deserve.  But sometimes its just so deserving, you just can’t help yourself.  Which brings us to John Paul Mitchell.  No, not the hair guy (whose actual name is John Paul DeJoria, go figure, right?) but the Independent candidate for Governor.  Mitchell is actually fun to read about and listen to when he’s talking about taxation, in fact, he wrote a book on it.  [Gratuitous plug just to be nice to him HERE]

But his most recent blog post, entitled “Gov. Brewer Conspiring Against the People“, is a strange rant against the polling company Public Opinion Strategies, whom he proclaims has a “dark history of fixing polls” (someone contact corporate legal please) to “meet Republican agendas.”  His principle objection?  I’ll let him tell you himself:

“Only 600 individuals were surveyed in a telephone poll. That is less than 3% of all eligible registered voters in the State of Arizona. By standard polling protocol, that is a very small window to assess.  What about the other 97% of Arizona voters? How would they vote?”

Hmm, 600 voters is less than 3% of all eligible registered voters?  Well that is true, but you get the feeling he means its just barely less, as he confirms when he asks what the other 97% of voters think.  Doing the math for Mitchell, what he’s asking is what about the other 19,400 registered voters in the State of Arizona, what do they think?

When he’s done getting the answer to that question, he can start to inquire about the other… other voters…  You know, the other 3,083,747 active voters in Arizona?

For those who don’t know, by standard polling protocol, 600 responses is a pretty large sample size for any poll.  And for those who wonder, Mitchell is a Doctorate student at the University of Sedona and he possesses a Master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling Psychology.