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Anyone Can Vote In This New Orleans Election
March 24th, 2006
If You Read Nothing Else
By clicking on the following link, you cast your vote for Nick Varrecchio to participate in the final debates for Clerk of Court. Help a blogger out and click for Nick.
Please note that, once you click, your vote is cast. The click is the vote. There is nothing more to do, except to click again in 15 minutes.
An Important Debate
WDSU Channel 6 is going to have a debate between two candidates for Clerk of Criminal District Court.
This is an important office. This office is responsible for conducting election in Orleans Parish. This office manages criminal trial evidence.
My candidate is Nick Varrecchio. I’m fully behind Nick Varrecchio.
There are many candidates running, so how is WDSU going to choose two candidates?
Using an poll on it’s web site.
An Arbitrary Selection
That’s right, by using an entirely unscientific online web poll, WDSU will choose two candidates that will be 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 voting again and again? Why wouldn’t they?
The poll accepts GET requests, so you can skip the form and vote for Nick Varrecchio by clicking on the following link.
Please, click on that link to vote for Nick Varrecchio. When you click on the link, your vote is cast for Nick. It is such an arbitrary way to allot television time, you may as well help Nick out with a click. Learn more about Nick Varrechio at his campaign site.
In Praise of WDSU
WDSU is a great local station, that has done a great job keeping us informed during Katrina. Their web site is an excellent resource.
I understand why they want to narrow the debate.
A Real Poll Please
I do not, however, feel that this is a good way for them to choose two candidates, since it is so easily manipulated.
Anyone can vote, and vote multiple times. Someone could write a script to vote every five minutes.
The outcome of this poll and the television time it bestows can change the contest. They really ought to use a scientific poll.
Alan Gutierrez
comments
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Comments 
This is a very interesting experiment, Alan. Just how much can a blog influence this outcome? But … does anyone else find it a little bizarre that someone sitting quietly at home on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Adelaide, Australia can be voting for a debate candidate in New Orleans, Louisiana?
Ric
I know. It’s something else. There is a disclaimer on the survey form that says…
Everyone on the campaign is pretty much freaking out though. The television time, during the news, is priceless. Being voted into the debate is so important for crediblity.
For a contest like the Clerk of Court, budgets don’t permit much television, so this television exposure can be decisive.
Ric
I forgot to say…
Thanks for voting for Nick Varrecchio!
Vote early. Click reload often.
Just watching the results for a few moments, it does appear obvious that one candidate is running a script (or has paid someone to sit and click).
Have you written a script yet? Have you notified other news media about this? It seems like a horrible (if well-intentioned) abuse of the power of media to influence an election.
Knowing that its happening, and that the system is broken, I think you should do whatever is in your power to take advantage of the system *AND* highlight its injustice. What would WDSU say if one candidate has a million votes, while the next candidate has a thousand? If Nick is chosen, I would ask him to make a point in the debate about the inherent unfairness of the selection process.
Paul
I don’t think anyone has written a script. The votes dropped off at nighttime.
I do think that people are voting again and again. I’m sure they are going to get up and running again today.
I would never write a script or work to effect the poll programatically.
I am sure that people would argue that it was some sort of cheat to write a script, but the process was otherwise fair, which is not true, of course. They would simply disqualify the candidate who used a script, saying that it was a fluke.
Of course, the other candidates might have a script, but they could be clever about how they use it. If this was how elections were deterined everywhere, people would have clever spoofs to make their million votes look legitimate.
No script. But, I’d like to get this blog entry linked in like crazy today.
So, when do the polls close on this? When’s the debate? When’s the election?
thanks, hard to stop once I started…
Jud
When the polls close, your guess is as good as mine. I’ll ask Nick and Jimmy Delery this afternoon. I’m going to the opening of Nick’s campaign headquarters.
Here’s the front end of the poll…
http://www.wdsu.com/politics/index.html
The election is on April 22nd. It’s a crazy election with a large number of candidates in each contest. (Katrina has embolded folks to make a political bid, since the demographics have changed.)
I feel so… Chicagoan.
Ha! To quote Becky Houtman.
Thanks for your help in deciding the future of New Orleans elections and criminal justice.
Two of the folks that are ahead are relative unknowns, and will probably get more votes in the web poll than in the actual election. Seriously.
Nick really does have the support here. He should really be the one in that debate.
Jud
The polls close at the end of Monday. The debate is on April 13th.
Seems apropos:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060325/pl_nm/hurricanes_voters_dc
Dave
It is apropos. One of the projects I’m discussing is turning one of the people finder databased into a constituent finder.
http://familymessages.org/
This is a project that collaborated with immediately after Katrina. At the 9th Ward Homeowners, State Rep. Charmaine Marchand asked me what it would take to create a database of displaced constituents for the Lower 9th. I said a phone call to Dan Chaney. He wrote Family Messages in about 48 hours.
Amazing stuff. I’m not plugging it in the mainline blog, since I’m waiting to see if it’s really possible. We’ll see.
Re: Your stance on scripting.
Are you motivated by the fact that Nick was (at the time of this writing) not one of the top 2 candidates? If you are most interested in getting Nick into the debate, then fine – no scripting so as not to compromise the position of your candidate.
Or are you motivated by the misuse of an entertainment poll by a media entity to greatly influence an election?
Is there a big difference between scripting, and sending out emails linking to this blog? Is there a difference between scripting and me keeping a webpage open and hitting “refresh” every couple of minutes to vote again?
Yes. I am campaigning for my candidate.
No. I don’t want to make my candidate look bad by using a script. Other people are campaigning in these web polls for their candidates just as I am campaigning for mine.
Yes. I think this is stupid. I’ve highlighted it.
The difference between running a script and clicking refresh is that it is concievable that it can be argued that the script is cheating. It is an illogical argument, but one that I would expect the people who would prefer to use a web poll rather than scientific poll would make.
I don’t have the time or money to be on the other end of that argument. I’m not going to set myself up for it, or create a local repuation as a “hacker”.
I’m not working for a start up, but for local small businesses. I know how easily confused people are by technical issues. “You mean he broke into the TV computer?”
By clicking the link again and again, it’s no different from the supporters of the other candidates who are pressing the vote button again and again.
I am calling attention to how foolish this is.
Looks like Nick is going to lose, anyway. He needs to beed David Kent, since they are taking the winner the group of candidates who debated on two separate nights.
It’s 6pm Tuesday 28th here in Adelaide, and it looks like the poll isn’t accepting any more votes. If that’s the case, then congratulations, Alan – it looks like Nick got up by nearly 300 votes (maybe a few of them mine!)