Hector Balderas
Weeks ago, Steve Terrell of The Santa Fe New Mexican called this site’s weekly, non-scientific polls, “NM’s straw poll.”
I have no problem with people organizing supporters to vote in the polls – as Hector Balderas did in last week’s poll by asking people on Facebook and Twitter to cast votes in favor of approving of the job he’s doing as state auditor. When that happens, the weekly polls in some ways are a test of organization, like the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa to which Terrell was drawing comparisons.
Secretary of State Mary Herrera, for example, has gotten the result she’s desired three times in polls on this site by sending out e-mails asking people to vote for her.
But the problem with online polls is that there are more nefarious ways to manipulate them that require only one person. I’m not going to describe how to do it here, but I’m going to tell you that the manipulation of last week’s poll was the worst I’ve been aware of in the history of this site.
After the poll was posted for 24 hours, about 77 percent of voters said they did approve of the job Balderas is doing. But Monday night, while most of us were sleeping, 300 votes were cast against Balderas, and he was losing badly when most of us work up Tuesday morning. That trend continued all week.
At the conclusion of the poll tonight, 625 voters, or 53 percent, said they don’t approve of the job Balderas is doing, while 527, or 45 percent, said they do approve, and 17, or 1 percent, said they don’t know. In total, 1,169 votes were cast.
That’s the second-largest number of votes ever cast in a non-scientific poll on this site.
Needless to say, I’m not happy. I intend these polls for fun, but it’s not fun when someone manipulates them in this manner.
My options are few. I think I can find a way to limit a poll so only registered users of this site can vote, but that would exclude many of you or at least add a cumbersome step. Or I can stop running weekly polls altogether. One person could ruin it for everyone.
For now, I’m going to issue a warning to the perpetrator: Knock it off.
I may also ask all of you in an upcoming poll whether I should continue running the weekly polls. You’re also welcome to share feedback in the comments section at the end of this posting.
A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that the Balderas poll had the most votes ever cast in a poll on this site.