Escambia County Commissioner Doug Underhill is looking for the taxpayers to pay to defend him against a lawsuit concerning comments he made on Facebook.
The InWeekly/Political Matrix polled 605 likely Escambia County voters and found nearly three out of every four respondents said that they didn’t want to pay for any commissioner’s legal bills regarding lawsuits for personal comments made on a blog or social media. Only 12 percent believed taxpayers should foot his legal bills.
If a County Commissioner is sued for his personal comments made on his personal blog or on social media, such as Facebook or Twitter, should the taxpayers pay for his legal defense?
| Responses: 605 | Total | Overall % |
| Yes | 72 | 11.90% |
| No | 446 | 73.71% |
| Undecided | 87 | 14.38% |
The percentages for those saying “no” were consistent across all five county districts. However, Underhill’s District 2 did have a higher percentage voting affirmatively–17.5 percent.
| Responses: 605 | Bergosh D1 | Underhill D2 | May D3 | Bender D4 | Barry D5 |
| Yes | 11.3 | 17.5 | 12.0 | 11.0 | 8.9 |
| No | 76.5 | 74.6 | 71.2 | 71.7 | 75.8 |
| Undecided | 12.2 | 7.9 | 16.8 | 17.3 | 15.3 |
METHODOLOGY:
The persons sampled were likely Escambia County voters with a voting score of 100% for the general election cycles. The voters were called using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system during the hours of 1-7 p.m. between June 14 and 15. The Margin of Error for this study is +/- 4.5% with a confidence level of 95%.