An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. -T.S. Eliot
My sweet post about Charity Hospital was all written, ready to breathe in the sweet air of the electronic stage. And Alan, that buzzkill (*smile*), had to inform me about an impropriety in the way the two candidates are chosen for the Clerk of Criminal District Court debate. This New Orleans Blogger explains that the candidates are picked by WDSU, the local NBC affiliate, via an online poll in which anyone can vote and numerous times. Can you say “vote early, vote often?”
… by using an entirely unscientific online web poll, WDSU will choose two candidates that [are] given valuable television time, and priceless exclusivity. Worst of all, you can vote in the poll every five minutes or so.
Already, two of the candidates have 800 votes apiece. Are [they] voting again and again? Why wouldn“t they? … Someone could write a script to vote every five minutes.
WDSU’s poll disclaimer reads: “Please keep in mind that our polls are for entertainment and are not conducted in a scientific fashion. We make no guarantees about the accuracy of the results other than that they reflect the choices of the users who participated.”
There is no such thing as a scientific poll. Period. That said, there are ways to safeguard against possible abuse. How hard would it be for WDSU to permanently block IPs that have already voted? More importantly, why does the window for voting open again after 5 minutes?
A phonecall to Alan helped me understand the poll’s mechanism better: “In memory, the poll has a list of the IPs of the last few votes that were clicked. And then the software forgets either because time passes or whatever buffer it uses fills up after a while. I can’t believe that my most viable candidate can be excluded from a debate because another candidate had his/her nephew clicking for hours on end.”
VatulBlog supports no candidate for Clerk of Criminal District Court. The point of this post regards the stupidity of this situation – it is ludicrous that two candidates will receive media exposure in a debate, i.e. political manna, through a completely arbitrary electronic process. Local politics constitute the most important and accessible arena for citizen participation. This is where we exert the strongest influence on who governs our immediate surroundings.
I’m certain this is an innocent oversight on the part of WDSU, but a troubling one, nonetheless. Technology is more easily abused by the foxes at the expense of the poultry. No American community, much less New Orleans, can afford a lapse in secure polling on the part of its media outlets if that’s how debate contestants are picked. A manufactured debate cannot bring about a serious discussion of the issues, especially with respect to an office recently vacated by Kimberly Williamson-Butler.
I wonder what another New Orleans Blogger has to say about this.
As regards the emails I’ve received about scientific polling: it’s statistics. Any such exercise is statistical witchcraft. It’s how you present the numbers.
Somewhat along the lines of a statement I made to a friend today, “Two data points do not a trend make.”
“Lies, damn lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain.
Maitri, could you amend you post to include the Link Think New Orleans trackback? Part of the experiment is to show the few NOLA bloggers that have true blogs can show the other NOLA bloggers the advantages, and to make sure that those NOLA bloggers that have them, know what a trackback is.
Danke
Alan, can you send me one of those spiffy “I voted” stickers to wear?
Alan,
I am not going to amend this post to include the Link Think New Orleans trackback because I am connecting directly to your post on the WDSU poll. In this case, the LTNO trackback is irrelevant. A trackback to Blogometer addresses the issue at hand and calls attention to your “indie blog.”
Today’s post, on the other hand, tracks back to your LTNO post.