MISSOURI WATCH: 'TIS THE SEASON: NATION'S VOTERS ARE POLLS APART

We are entering a season of the year that is known in certain circles as The Polling Season. It resembles another period known as The Mating Season, but to experience either one, persons must be participants, not bystanders. The manner in which most of us are forced to take part in The Polling Season is like having a birthday party without gifts. You're happy enough for the occasion but the rewards are nonexistent.

That's the way it is with The Polling Season. Citizens are happy enough to answer questions asked by someone being paid by the responses received but what's in it for the respondent? As someone who commissions opinion polls during campaigns, I've become aware of the lack of enthusiasm among John Q. Public for participating in a survey in which neither the answers nor the rewards are meaningful. One day I received a bill for $1 through- the mail from someone who had answered a poll question, and I was more than happy to recompense him.

I don't believe most of us would mind answering inquiries from someone who obsessively asks personal questions if we had a better choice of answers. For example, if a pollster asks me if I intend to vote for Bill Clinton or Bob Dole, I must either make a choice right on the spot or appear to be an uninformed moron by saying I haven't yet made up my mind. I've known for weeks who the candidates will be, so what's the problem? The problem is that I don't have any answer options.

Obviously, what's needed here are questions that enable me to express the full range of my views on the subject. I'll show you what I mean. Suppose the pollster asks, "What do you think of Bill Clinton?" Under the present system, I can either say I like him, I dislike him or I haven't made up my mind.

Under my system, the respondent has a number of other choices, such as:

1. Are there other alternatives?

2. Do you mean yesterday's Bill Clinton or the one who will be around tomorrow?

3. Do you happen to know what Mike Dukakis is doing between now and November?

4. Does that include what I think of Hillary?

If I'm asked what I think of Bob Dole, I would also appreciate a fuller range of responses than I either like or dislike him. For example:

1. Will Dole promise to be as mean after he's elected president as he was when he was in the Senate?

2. Has he given any thought to a crash course at Dale Carnegie's?

3. He has all the people skills of the Unabomber.

4. It would be reassuring to have someone as commander-in-chief who knows the difference between a ship and a boat.

Another favorite subject during The Polling Season is the public's view of a third party candidate, who has about as much chance of being the next President of the United States as Willie Horton, yet citizens are constantly being asked about his chance of occupying the White House. Thus we are asked, "Can a third party candidate like Ross Perot win in November?"

Instead of lying and saying he could be or giving the question the mini-second laugh that it deserves, we need some real options, such as:

1. Ross Perot has about as much chance of being our next president as Pat Buchanan does.

2. If he wins the nomination of the party that he virtually owns and certainly controls, Perot should immediately resign and designate his crazy aunt down in the basement.

3. Americans should have elected Perot during the Cold War when we would have scared the life out of the leaders in the Kremlim who would have concluded we had gone nuts.

4. Ask George Wallace, Strom Thurmond and all those other egomaniacs who tried the very same thing.

This is also the season for a poll question on the political parties. Those unfortunate enough to be standing idly on the sidewalk of a mall some Saturday afternoon are often asked this question: "Are you a Democrat or a Republican?" Such a question is of the same genre as whether you are right-handed or left handed, but for some strange reason we're supposed to take the inquiry seriously and offer a reasonable explanation why we belong to one of the two major political groups in the United States. Sometimes the question is even broadened to include a third category, which includes (a.) Independent; (b.) Illegal Alien; (c.) O.J. Simpson fan;

Under my reform polling technique, voters would be allowed to express their true feelings, inserting for the first time some honesty in our partisan preferences. For example:

1. I'm a Democrat because all the members of my family have been yellow-dog Democrats and I haven't had an original thought from the day I was born.

2. I'm a Republican because it favors big business and I work for a big company that pays me minimum wage and I am grateful for the opportunity of being a part of the corporate culture even though I must receive food stamps.

3. I have reached the conclusion that both parties are in business to bestow honor, money and glory on a small number of people who are laughingly called Party Leaders. The only advantage I gain from party membership is the right to contribute my money to pay the huge salaries and lavish expenses of people who have weenied themselves into leadership jobs.

4. As the leader of the White Racist Supremacist Klan Party once said, "There isn't a dime's worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans." Inflation has reduced this difference to a nickel.

Anybody want to join my party? It's called The American Public Opinion Freedom Party. Please mail your generous membership fee immediately.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.