Olympia and Tumwater residents might have received a text this weekend that asked, “Should biological boys play in girl’s high school sports? YES or NO”.
According to Corey Gauny, chair of the Thurston County Republican Party, the texts were sent by the party to roughly 28,000 registered voters in Olympia and Tumwater.
Gauny said the purpose of the poll was to gather data on the electorate’s concerns.
“The objective and goal was to find out: Is this an issue for local races? Is this something the electorate is concerned about or not?” he said.
“Oftentimes, there’s a hecklers’ veto that no, this is not an issue, or yes, this is an issue. We want data to support, rather than anecdotal evidence.”
Gauny also said the party aims to make data-driven decisions.
“Making informed decisions, datad-driven decisions is probably the most important and responsible thing we can do, rather than rile people up based upon anecdotal evidence or feelings.”
.The county Republican Party is still processing results from the poll, but Gauny said that preliminary findings yielded a 12% response rate.
Averaged between Olympia and Tumwater voters, 16% of respondents answered yes, “biological boys should play in girls sports” while 84% answered no.
Gauny also said the party received additional responses which are still being processed and identified as “yes” or “no” answers.
“And just to be clear, it wasn’t strictly yes and no, we had some very vile and vulgar responses that obviously we account for yes or no, depending on that response. So we’re still breaking that down,” he said.
However, social media users have expressed their concerns about the poll.
One user who reacted to the text posted this comment on Reddit, “Targeting a small handful of children like this is utterly reprehensible.”
Another local responded to the text with, “TRANS PEOPLE EXIST, MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS”
Other social media users said they were concerned about how the county GOP was able to reach them or how the party decided who to text, but Gauny said they followed FCC guidelines in distributing the recent poll.
“I don’t want people to be fearful that we got their private information, and I want them to be reassured that no, this is how door knockers for campaigns know where to go,” he said.
According to FCC regulations, political texts can be sent through autodialers with the called party’s prior express consent or sent manually, with or without prior express consent. However, political messages can be reported by forwarding the text to 7726 or “SPAM” and stopped if the recipient replies, “STOP.”
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