Kos Readers Cheat. Irony Runs Thick, Drowns Hundreds

Sometimes I lose faith in humanity. Quite often, actually. Now I think about it, I don't think I've ever had any.

The 2004 Weblog Awards have been ruined by idiots at Wampum who have revealed a method of cheating the system to repeatedly register votes for the site of your choice - a cheat that has been gleefully adopted by the goons at the DailyKos.

To begin, let's not labour under the illusion that the author of the cheat didn't intend it to be used to rig the vote. If he wanted to see if he could find a way to crack the code as a test of his skills, fair enough. Posting it on a blog and not expecting that it would be used is nothing less than idiotic. So, this guy is either a dirty cheat or a stupid idiot. You decide.

Secondly, the bragging on the diary at Kos is laughable. A quick glance at the comments tells you all you need to know as to why I can no longer align myself with these people:-

Were cheating - look at Snappy's post. I think it's great, anytime we can make them look stupid it makes my day.

It makes them look stupid?

We'll probably end up winning, and they'll be the ones throwing accusations of fraud and voting irregularities. And they'll probably initiate a recount and claim dkos only won because we somehow cheated. Maybe they'll learn some lesson? Maybe not.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. Maybe this guy is so addled he doesn't even realise that he's cheating. Who knows?

It's unavoidable to draw a comparison between this and the Presidential Election, so here goes...

You can't complain about vote rigging in one election and then commit it in another. I don't care how important the result is - a vote is a vote. If you don't like democracy, there's a boat leaving for North Korea in 'bout 15 minutes. Mush.


Now, I know Kevin Aylward is a nice guy. Left, Right, whatever - he's a nice guy. He has a job, a family, and a blog to run. He's dedicated a lot of time and effort to constructing this poll so we could all have a little fun. There are no prizes. There's no big awards ceremony. It's just fun.

So how messed up inside are these people that they would happily destroy the hard work of a good person? I'm searching for a word to describe how I feel about those who would cheat in the poll. I suppose the best word would be disappointed. It's such a pointless way to throw away your integrity.

Captain Ed at Captains Quarters put it rather well:-

It's the equivalent of bringing a marked deck to a poker game with matchsticks for stakes.

Also blogging - Powerline, Politburo, Speed of Thought, Argghhh!!!, The Mudville Gazette, Pajama Pundits, Carnivorous Conservative, La Shawn Barber, Ramblings' Journal, ISOU.