Throughout the election season, Birmingham Weekly will be monitoring campaign activity, but to do so we need your help. In particular, we’re interested in polls, autodialers/robocalls and push polls.

If you receive a call or have a message on your voice mail, don’t hang up or delete the message. Yes, these calls can be annoying, but if you participate in the poll or listen to the message you can help us gather important information about the call.

If you receive an automated message, please take note of who sent it to you. Does the call identify itself? Does the call show on your caller ID? What was the content of the message? Was it generally a positive message, or did you think it “went negative” by attacking another candidate?

If you are asked to participate in a poll, take note of who is conducting the poll and what number they are calling from. You can help us by taking note of what questions the pollster asks. Do they focus on particular issues or candidates? Are they testing a political message? Or do you feel the poll is being used as a campaign technique called push-polling, whereby a campaign tries to push your vote toward one candidate by sharing negative information about another?

If you have received any of these, please share the information in the form below. By doing so, you can help us as we gather information and watch for trends and patterns. If you have a friend who has received a campaign message or poll, tell that person about what we’re doing here, or share a link to this post on Twitter and Facebook. We appreciate your help.