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Say goodbye to NMPolitics.net’s weekly polls
Heath Haussamen
Five weeks ago I made a change so that only registered users of NMPolitics.net could vote 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.
It didn’t work. The word went out on Thursday to supporters of Democrat Mary Herrera about how to manipulate last week’s poll asking who would win the secretary of state’s race. I don’t know exactly what was said – or who said it – 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.
Herrera went from significantly behind on Thursday to taking the lead by Friday.
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 – one after another – 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.
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.
I’ve always intended these polls to be nothing more than fun. But they’re not. And they add nothing positive to the conversation about politics and government. In addition – despite what some seem to think – they have no sway over who wins elections.
The polls apparently serve only to bring out the worst elements of the political class – people who are willing to cheat to win.
It’s pathetic, really. And unfortunate for the rest of us.
Say goodbye to NMPolitics.net’s weekly polls. I’m putting an end to them, effective immediately.
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Good! I thought the polls were removed because they indicated Denish was winning!
I want to be clear about something: I’m not saying I believe Herrera did (or did not) do this. I don’t know. Clearly, it was someone who wanted Herrera to win, but that doesn’t prove she did it or even that she had knowledge of it.
There’s no evidence to prove she did, so while some of you have been submitting comments accusing her of doing this, unless you provide me with proof, I won’t publish them.
I have been aware of several instances where “the word got out” to try to influence the polls, in one case an attempt to counteract a push by the other side. Actually quite silly.
Well, we shouldn’t at all be surprised at these political shenanigans – it’s NM politics in its purest, raunchiest form. And even though these polls were mere indicators of opinion, they were interesting and fun to participate in. You do a superb job Heath – I read your blog every morning with my cup of coffee. Keep up the good work!!
As a Repulbican, I think you are most always fair in your reporting and assessments, Heath. The polls were always interesting and gave kind of an informal assessment of what people were thinking. It is too bad it had to be limited to registered users and, again, way too bad that people still figured out how to manipulate the system to support their candidate. It looks very unprofessional for the candidate, whether they knew about it or not. While I will miss the weekly polls, you did the right thing.
Mr. Haussamen, I do know for a fact that Herrera’s people were up to something. My brother is on the Democrat committee in Bernalillo county and one of “Mary’s people” called him on Friday to get him to organize people to flood your site with votes for her. He didn’t listen to them. These are people that have been in her circle since she has been county clerk so I know that she could call off her dogs.
When November comes around, active Democrats like us are probably going to skip voting in for this office or maybe even vote for Duran. But we are not going to vote for “Madame Secretary” because she is an embarrassment and we all know it.
I doubt that Mary Herrera herself knew about this or encouraged it in any way. It is unfortunate that some of her supporters decided to game the system.
To give an example from another angle: I personally know of two candidate forums where the Republican incumbent was given unlimited time to speak. The most glaring example was Dub Williams at a forum in Lincoln county. This was not significant that year because he had no oponent (but got rather boring as he rambled on). The other example was at a forum during the 2008 general election that was held in Piñon. Nora Espinoza not held to the three minute limit and spoke for about 6 minutes. She didn’t stop until she ran out of things to say. I, her Democratic opponent, was cut off at more like two minutes. I complained about this, and at the primary forum in Piñon this year the new timekeeper was scrupulous about time limits.
HOWEVER I do not believe that Espinoza instigated, was even aware of, or encouraged the unfair treatment at the 2008 forum.
That’s too bad. I always did enjoy them. I just recently moved back to New Mexico after being away for quite some time and it has finally hit me, NM politics has a bad case of “patronismo.” I used to study this in undergrad, thinking that it could have only happened back in the early days of our statehood. However, that’s not the case at all. I worked in Santa Fe this last session and was disgusted by all the back room deals going down. Now, how this relates to your polls? Well, if a candidate or politician in the state is doing everything in their power to rig some random unscientific poll, I can only imagine what they’re doing on the job. Utter disappointment.