September 2024

“Hello brothers and sisters!Welcome to Fall 2024.
While this should not be news to any LLN readers, this is a presidential election year—and it’s one of the closest presidential races in our history.

I want to talk briefly on the importance of what is just around the corner; something that can potentially affect your quality of life—and most importantly, the lives of your children, grandchildren, and all generations to come.

All elections are important, from local school board elections to presidential elections. This year, 2024, is no exception and the race for the next Head of State seems to have swallowed up all the media airtime with never-ending, negative ads and campaign materials that do not seem to align with anyone’s moral compass.                          

I am a firm believer that knowledge is power and that the best, most logical method of obtaining your knowledge (power) is to educate yourself on the important topics that you hold most dear. Use your investigative skills to seek out information on issues that are dear to you, but make sure that the information you seek is not biased to your own opinion. It is crucial to look at things from all sides to ensure you are making an informed choice, especially this election season.          

Do NOT rely on only one source of information when you are seeking your knowledge (power). Always very the information your sources are using to educate or persuade you. Remember, the sources’ conclusions are opinions that you can choose to agree or disagree with, allowing you to divert your power.

Statistics can help identify issues, but without vetting the source and the accuracy of the information being presented, you may not be making an informed choice if the statistics are biased. Statistical data can be easily manipulated to support a source’s main premise or goal.

Polls can also be used as a form of manipulation if the sample size is taken from a pre-determined polling base. This alone should be a red flag of how accurate a poll is, so make sure you know the creator of the poll, the base demographic area, size of the population polled, and all questions that were included in the poll. Regarding the accuracy of political polls, polls are only a snapshot in time and will probably become obsolete shortly after the poll is completed and released.

           
It would be logistically difficult to pose poll questions to every single person in the United States (not to mention costly), so a sample size is often used as an estimate for a larger group. Some sample size polls can be as little as 1,000-1,500 people, which could be enough to estimate a national opinion, but could also implies that it may not be enough to estimate a national opinion.

Think about recent presidential election polls; some polls predicated that Hillary Clinton had a 98% change of beating Trump in 2016. We all remember the outcome of that election, and this clearly shows that pollsters can be incorrect. Other polls correctly predicted that Biden would defeat Trump. These are just two examples of why polls can sometimes be useful, but demonstrates that the accuracy is up in the air.

This alone should be enough to be a red flag and an alarm in your head. Remember to research the poll information so that YOU can make your informed choices when voting and do not forget that your brothers/sisters/neighbors are your family too.

Please register to vote if you haven’t and go out and vote in this especially important election in November. Registering to vote is easy! Just visit www.sos.state.mi.us/ to see if you are registered and where to go if not. As always, it is my pleasure to serve this great membership!Make those precious memories and stay safe UAW family! Go VOTE!!!

In Solidarity,

Char