By: Dave Astor Despite some digital ballot-box stuffing, or perhaps because of it, MIT has won the poll that asked where Alex Doonesbury should go to college.
"A careful check of the applicable rulebook indicates that queering the results was not specifically prohibited," noted a Friday post on Doonesbury.com, where the
poll was conducted. "And by tradition, engineers, hackers, and techfolk will assume that in a problem-solving situation of this nature, there is no box out of which they are not expected to climb. The Doonesbury Town Hall thanks all those who took the time and trouble to vote, even those who voted only once. Ms. Doonesbury will be attending MIT."
More than 175,000 votes -- legitimate or otherwise -- had come in when the poll was removed from Doonesbury.com Tuesday morning. Final percentages were not posted on the site today. But when contacted by E&P this morning, a Doonesbury Town Hall spokesman said MIT had 48%, Rensselaer 32%, and Cornell 19%.
Today's post explained some of the ballot shenanigans: "Voting was insane, rampant, ingenious, and impressively ruthless. An MIT student put up 'Doonesbury Voting Hack,' a Web site (adorned with art borrowed from the Town Hall) which enabled would-be-ballot-stuffers to spew out over a million votes in a single night. 'We're all running cgi hack scripts,' lol'd one MIT blogger. 'I've voted 3 or 4 thousand times!' Fortunately the prophylactic measures swiftly implemented by the Doonesbury Town Hall crack tech crew kept most of the votes from making it into the poll.
"Meanwhile, Rennselaer had also stepped up to the plate -- or rather made their own attempt to move it. As campus blog entries indicate, token reservations were overcome ... and a curl was disseminated, intended to accomplish pretty much what the MIT script had done using Flash. The Rensselaer effort was less successful -- still, several hundred thousand votes bounced off our servers. By the time a handful of indy hackers made their run at the Straw Poll, the ballot box was adequately unstuffable.
"Cornell blogage shows that students there were watching the fray. ... The Cornell alumni office had early-on taken an above-board interest, alerting alums to the situation and urging them to vote, but this effort did not bring Cornellians to the poll in numbers sufficient for Big Red to catch up. 'We're obviously not trying hard enough to cheat,' lamented a dismayed blogger. However, students and alums managed to post many passionate, articulate, humorous, and convincing posts on our Blowback page, all making the case that Alex should head to Ithaca. In acknowledgement of this impressive and moving effort, the Doonesbury Town Hall is pleased to award Cornell the Doonesbury Straw Poll Congeniality Award."
Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" comic appears in about 1,400 newspapers via Universal Press Syndicate.
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