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News & ArtsWednesday, May 27, 2009
City Drago Ballot-Stuffing Already?
Posted by Eli Sanders on Wed, May 27, 2009 at 1:30 PM
About an hour after I posted this Slog straw poll on the Seattle mayor's race, I received an e-mail, subject line:
Mayor's race poll hacked?
The correspondent had noticed something, and we here at Slog headquarters had noticed it too: Jan Drago was ascending a bit too rapidly in our poll. After the first 100 or so votes (which are usually a good predictor of the final poll outcome), Drago was in third place, behind McGinn and Nickels. Then, suddenly, she shot out to first place and was commanding something close to 60 percent of the vote.
What happened? Is Drago's newly-launched campaign really the sleeper hit of the summer?
Nope.
Stranger web guru Anthony Hecht looked at the IP addresses that all the new Drago votes were coming from and quickly found Drago's base of support: one IP address. (And it doesn't look to be a business IP address, which could have meant hundreds of Drago supporters, coincidentally all in one office, all using the same router. It looks to be a residential address, meaning one rabid Drago supporter engaging in some highly repetitive web-trickery.)
The statistical proof: Back when the poll was at 678 total votes, with Drago way out in front, Anthony found about 85 percent of Drago's 367 votes coming from that one IP address. Clear cut electronic ballot-stuffing.
So I called Drago to ask about this, and began by explaining that we'd put up a poll that was showing her way out in front. Before I could get to the "But..." she said, excitedly:
Wait, wait, wait, I gotta write it down!
Then, after I explained the apparent ballot-stuffing, she said:
I don’t know anything about it. I literally don’t know anything about it. I’ve been so much in the eye of the hurricane, and clearly the media is hungry for a race. Yesterday—I’ve just never experienced anything like that... But I have no idea. I’ll check with my political consultant, but I guess my response is that I’m honest and people know that. I play the game honestly. It’s gonna be a rough road. I’ve never played those kinds of games in my campaigns, and I certainly don’t intend to.
Sandeep Kaushik, spokesman for the campaign of Mayor Greg Nickels, said only:
This result is about as credible as the other poll that Drago was flogging around a couple of weeks ago.
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You do know that the machines doing the counts for the primary in our county are from Diebold, right?
If I were working on a campaign for an incumbent mayor who is stuck at 25% in every real (ie - statistically valid) poll done to date, I'd want to change the subject, too.
18
Maybe you don't care. It's like "Ooh, online poll! Free data! I can write a story about what people think for NOTHING! Real polls cost thousands of dollars and who can afford that? Stick a widget on a web site and you get the same thing and it costs jack squat!" What could go wrong?
And the dueling campaign saga is just days old ... Long chat at a party last night, no one person likes either of them ... this will be weird ... so if there is no positive support ... does negative matter?
Oh the blood, the blood ...
21
Drago voted against the bag fee on the grounds that it's regressive. (Mind you, the bags are optional, just like alcohol and cigarettes--are taxes on those regressive too?) But in 2007 and 08, as a Sound Transit Board member, Drago voted to put sales tax increases on the ballot to fund transit expansion. And she supported Prop. 1 both times if memory serves. So a sales tax you can't avoid is not regressive, but a plastic bag fee you can avoid and which serves a dire environmental purpose is?
Supposedly Drago favors banning the bangs entirely instead of putting a fee on them. But neither during the bag fee debate nor since then has she proposed a bill to do so.
I can vote for candidates I don't agree with on everything. I can't support those who are just hypocritical.
22
Drago voted against the bag fee on the grounds that it's regressive. (Mind you, the bags are optional, just like alcohol and cigarettes--are taxes on those regressive too?) But in 2007 and 08, as a Sound Transit Board member, Drago voted to put sales tax increases on the ballot to fund transit expansion. And she supported Prop. 1 both times if memory serves. So a sales tax you can't avoid is not regressive, but a plastic bag fee you can avoid and which serves a dire environmental purpose is?
Supposedly Drago favors banning the bangs entirely instead of putting a fee on them. But neither during the bag fee debate nor since then has she proposed a bill to do so.
I can vote for candidates I don't agree with on everything. I can't support those who are just hypocritical.
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