{"id":18800,"date":"2010-06-27T22:21:14","date_gmt":"2010-06-28T04:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=18800"},"modified":"2010-06-27T22:21:21","modified_gmt":"2010-06-28T04:21:21","slug":"say-goodbye-to-nmpolitics-net%e2%80%99s-weekly-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/06\/say-goodbye-to-nmpolitics-net%e2%80%99s-weekly-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"Say goodbye to NMPolitics.net\u2019s weekly polls"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_18801\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignright\" style=\"max-width: 175px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18801\" title=\"BlogPic2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/BlogPic2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"175\" height=\"236\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Five weeks ago I made a change so that only registered users of NMPolitics.net <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/05\/now-only-registered-users-can-vote-in-weekly-polls\/\">could vote<\/a> in weekly, non-scientific polls. That was in an effort to stop people from manipulating the polls by voting over and over and over and over again.<\/p>\n<p>It didn\u2019t work. The word went out on Thursday to supporters of Democrat Mary Herrera about how to manipulate last week\u2019s poll asking who would win the secretary of state\u2019s race. I don\u2019t know exactly what was said \u2013 or who said it \u2013 but people started going to mail.com and each creating multiple e-mail addresses so they could then register multiple times with NMPolitics.net and vote in the poll over and over.<\/p>\n<p>Herrera went from significantly behind on Thursday to taking the lead by Friday.<\/p>\n<p>How do I know it happened? On Thursday evening I started receiving notifications of several registrations within a few minutes of each other. For example (and this is a fake example) the registrations \u2013 one after another \u2013 would come from joe45@europe.com, joe45@usa.com, joe45@mail.com, joe45@consultant.com and so on. And the votes for Herrera would increase.<\/p>\n<p>I e-mailed Herrera on Saturday to let her know I was aware of what was happening and ask her to tell her supporters to stop. She has not responded.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve always intended these polls to be nothing more than fun. But they\u2019re not. And they add nothing positive to the conversation about politics and government. In addition \u2013 despite what some seem to think \u2013 they have no sway over who wins elections.<\/p>\n<p>The polls apparently serve only to bring out the worst elements of the political class \u2013 people who are willing to cheat to win.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s pathetic, really. And unfortunate for the rest of us.<\/p>\n<p>Say goodbye to NMPolitics.net\u2019s weekly polls. I\u2019m putting an end to them, effective immediately.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/haussamen\">Haussamen bio<\/a> \u2502\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/category\/haussamen-columns\">Commentary archives<\/a> \u2502\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/category\/haussamen-columns\/feed\">Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Five weeks ago I made a change so that only registered users of NMPolitics.net could vote in weekly polls. That was an attempt to stop people from manipulating them. It didn\u2019t work, so I\u2019m putting an end to the polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-18800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-news-about-this-site"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}