Dubai: Two days ago, Gulf News asked its readers if they could vote in the US presidential election, who they'd vote for. Nearly seven out of ten said Democrat Barack Obama and only one in ten said they would vote for John McCain.
The rest either said independent Ralph Nader or none of the above.
We followed it up with Tuesday's question, why would they vote for Barack Obama.
Even though there were abnormal voting patterns, the final vote came to this: 35 per cent said they would vote for the young Democrat because of his policies; 17 per cent said they would vote for him because he is black, 14 per cent said because it would bring about cultural change and 11 per cent said they choose him because he is young. Having said that, 12 per cent said they preferred Republican John McCain to Obama.
A closer look at those abnormal voting patterns reveals that certain individuals attempted to manipulate the vote by posting hundreds of votes from a singular IP address at a time.
For example, we had around 8,700 votes posted from Melbourne, Australia saying they would vote for Obama because he is black.
A total of 6,955 came from Texas University, stating the same reason. Moreover, 1,499 votes came from Toronto.
Ironically, only 308 votes came from Illinois, the state which Obama represents in the US Senate, in support of John McCain.
Adam Flinter, Web Editor of Gulf News, said, "Almost every news website in the world will have experienced this kind of attack. It is almost impossible, if you want to make voting simple, to prevent such attempts to manipulate an online poll."
He also added, "It's flattering that these people took the time and effort to try and influence results of an online poll in a country thousands of miles away, even if they were ultimately unsuccessful."
