Issues with the nominations phase

This post has been modified at 12:21, Wednesday

1] Final nominations are being posted in each category now, at the foot of each post and I'll work my way through, not bothering with hyperlinks any more. The only important thing now is to get the top ten established.

2] Main issue first - "swamping", "vote stacking", "flooding", whatever you want to call it. As I'm not an electoral commissioner with multi-million dollars at his back, I had to let most through due to the rules we were operating under.

I see the problem - a highly motivated group organizes a lot of people from different IP addresses and sometimes the same address but clearly, from the style, coming from another person. Setting up different e-mails is also quite easy.

Of course the knowledgeable will say that that's why professional pollsters use a click and filter system. Yes but this was not a poll. This was accepting nominations. The poll itself will be using such a system.

UK Politics has taken issue with the "vote stacking" and says:

I am a bit irratated you suggested UK News and Politics was involved in vote stacking in any way. I simply put a post on the blog encouraging readers to support the blog and nominate and I send out an email to the monthly newsletter subscribers. I did not realise promotion of the awards and encoraging readers to nominate and vote was considered vote stacking.

I have now modified my comments and unreservedly apologize for the innuendo. I now see that the principals in the matter can't be held accountable for what people who like their blogs do.

So to transparency. I can shout "transparency" until I'm blue in the face but my only defence is that all e-mails are checkable, i.e. they are saved. As a fallback, any who feel their votes weren't counted, send the original e-mail as a message inside a new one, complete with full headers and I'll check when I can. Sorry but I have a day job to worry about too.

3] The bloggers who stood aloof from the event and chose not to self-nominate or to organize anyone on their behalf - that was their choice. In my case, I stated my policy from the start. I reserved three votes for different people in any category and used them at strategic moments.

In Categories 3 and 11, I actually voted for Adelaide Green Porridge Café and The Last Ditch. The way I voted for myself was to wait for the first person to nominate me, then I seconded it. Thus there are two votes in "most overrated" for me.

I really didn't want to take votes in Best Blogpowerer, as that should more properly go to our truly excellent bloggers and to the small blogger - that's what Blogpower is, it's raison d'etre. Not that I'm a large blogger but still ...

4] Was it representative? You'd expect me to say so and I think there are grounds to say it. A trawl through all the e-mails will show a quite varied participation, political, geographical, religious and sexual orientation and 90% was above board. It was that 10% of vote stacking which was the worry but quite frankly, that's part of the political process anyway in real life.

Can we claim the Awards carry any weight, have any meaning? Again - a check of the e-mails would show that they can indeed carry weight. The majority of my blogroll participated and those of fellow bloggers. They gave their nominations and that was that.

When you look at the final 10 in each category, you'll see one or two who are highly suspect and don't accord with what people know to be the case but the other eight pretty well followed the form guide. Your votes in the Poll proper will reflect the true state of affairs, of course.

It would be particularly annoying if those who stood aloof from the process were now to claim "unrepresentative", "unfair", "corrupt". Those charges should come from participants and there have been words, for example from Colin Campbell. Again, a check of the e-mails will show that all votes registered.

5] I'll discuss the polling later in the day.

REJECTIONS AND WHY

1] Tue Jun 5 16:27 [not communicated] "tanay bagayatkar" nominating All About My Movies: http://zummer.blogspot.com/ in every category.

2] Tom Pellatt Theo Spark in 19 - no url

3]Anna Wang Subject: award nomination Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 19:42:57 +0200 Already voted.

4] lucy zhang Subject: nominations Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 20:48:09 +0200 carbon copy of Anna Wang and two other entries. Though there were grounds for rejecting all, one of these was kept as the real vote.