How many would answer such a survey? How many, seeing it's a request for donations, don't even open the envelope, and throw it in the trash? Could you *really* extrapolate meaningful numbers from the responses (how accurate have political sample polls been recently)? How many hams are actually active and care about restrictions? At what number would you consider "pervasive"?
Not a snail mail poll which would be both expensive and largely ignored but rather something similar to the silly on-line polls they routinely put in QST which reaches all members and generates large response numbers according to their data. Cheap, easy, not labor intensive and quick for all involved to both respond and tabulate. There is no rational reason for not doing so.
Even if they receive a small response, that too is indicative of the ambivalence to the issue. But they don't even try which implies they don't want an answer.
It serves no purpose debating it here but the simple fact the ARRL hasn't exerted any effort to identify the magnitude of this "problem" is telling.
But even then, the sample rate would be too small just based on ARRL membership. The survey, to have any meaning, would have to be given to ALL OPs in the country covering a much larger and diverse group of people.
Also, what about OPs that don't use the internet. Are they automatically disqualified?
And how do you round up 500k+ email addresses from non members? Or do you automatically disqualify them too?
If it is so easy to do, why don't you do it?