Turley says fake pollster ‘raises an interesting legal question’
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Provpnadvice.com – Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, on Wednesday said the fake pollster that claimed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) and former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong (D) led in their respective races by wide margins “raises an interesting legal question.”
“The disclosure that Median Strategies released fake polling on major political races raises an interesting legal question,” Turley wrote on the social platform X , referring to the fake polling firm. “Little is known about the company or who was behind the fake polls, which were eagerly picked up by many in the media.”
Turley added that “even lies” can be protected under the First Amendment, citing the Supreme Court.
“There should be media investigations into who was behind the effort to plant the false polls. However, the Supreme Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act,” he wrote in a reply to his own post. “In United States v. Alvarez, the Court held 6-3 that it is unconstitutional to criminalize lies — in that case involving ‘stolen valor’ claims.”
Median Strategies on Monday announced that it was shutting down operations and would no longer disclose any new polls.
“All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn and should not be cited or treated as genuine polling data,” the company’s website states. “Median Strategies was created as a short-term social experiment examining how purported polling information could enter and spread through the political information ecosystem without independent verification.”
This was after Median Strategies released a poll showing Bass leading Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman by nearly 12 points.
The same fake poll also indicated 16 percent of respondents said they voted for former candidate and reality TV star Spencer Pratt, and 85 percent of those voters said they planned to vote for Bass, while 7 percent said they would back Raman.
The company then released a poll showing Hong with a 20-point lead in her race before losing last week to David Crowley in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Bass praised the poll, but a spokesperson later told the Los Angeles Times that there should be an investigation into “any bad faith attempts to influence elections.”
Raman’s campaign slammed Bass’s campaign for promoting “a fake poll without properly vetting the source.”
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