News of the Arroyo
Title: | Revenge of the nerds? |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2006-04-22 |
Summary: | April 22, 2006 - Gary Scott recounts the monkey-businss behind the NFL in the Rose Bowl poll recently conducted on the Star News websites. |
Author: | Gary Scott, Staff Writer |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | It all started Friday morning when the paper asked the simple question: \"Do you support Councilman Chris Holden\'s efforts to bring an NFL team to the Rose Bowl?\" Anyone wanting to make his or her voice heard on the matter was invited to visit the paper\'s Web site and click either \"yes\" or \"no\". To prevent cheating i.e. voting multiple times the Web page attaches a tiny tracking device, called a cookie, to the computer\'s memory. Computers with cookies are blocked from voting a second time. At first, the votes came in as expected. The anti-NFL side had the clear edge early on, largely due to the fact that the organized opposition sent out e-mail reminders to a network of supporters to make their voices heard. And the total number of votes was relatively large well above the 184 total votes in the poll on whether Zacarias Moussaoui should be put to death but nothing to be alarmed at. Yet. By Saturday afternoon, strange patterns started to emerge. The \"yes\" votes would stage an aggressive come back, pushing even, and then ahead of the \"no\" votes. Then the tide would turn, with the \"no\" votes jumping back in the lead. One started to imagine not hundreds of voters battling it out but two crazed nerds sitting in front of their computers madly right-clicking their mice. But how could this be with the cookie-fortress in place?! Well, one need only delete the cookie from one\'s computer to sidestep this sleepy safeguard a process that takes only a few seconds to complete. As the vote totals blossomed, we celebrated the outpouring of community interest, suppressing our suspicions about just how -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- narrow that community might be. Those on the losing end of the apparent manipulation were more skeptical. \"You ought to look into the number of yes\' votes pouring in a very, very short time interval early Saturday afternoon,\" reader and NFL opponent Ross Selvidge said in an e-mail alert. \"Your ballot box stuffing prevention mechanism may have been defeated.\" Could anyone be so brash? Indeed. On Monday, the situation became absurd. We had to laugh. At 1:15 p.m., the online tally showed 6,373 votes had been cast, with 68.2 percent in favor of Holden\'s effort and 31.8 percent opposed. Five minutes later, the total jumped to 6,652 votes, most of them coming on the \"yes\" side. Over the next five minutes, another 394 votes were cast. They favored Holden 5-to-1. At 1:30 p.m, the total jumped to 7,149, with the yes side at 71.2 percent and the no side at 28.8 percent. Then the frenzy stopped. The poll remained up a few more days, with the percentage of \"yes\" votes climbing into the high 70s. The results did not escape Holden\'s notice. \"The ironic thing is those numbers correlate with the poll that was done last year,\" he said, referring to a survey done of registered voters before the City Council abandoned the NFL proposal. Ironic indeed. gary.scott@sgvn.com (626) 578-6300, EXT. 4458 |
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