Straw poll: Applicants for the interim at-large Council seat

Seven citizens have applied to be the interim at-large councilor for Noah Cashman’s Northfield City Council seat.

This interim term would be from Aug. 18 to the end of 2008.

The Council evidently will interview the applicants at the Aug. 11 mtg, and then select someone (round-robin style, possibly) at the Aug. 18 mtg.

Vote for one, two or three. Feel free to discuss the applicants before or after you take the straw poll.

[poll id=”16″]

19 Comments

  1. Griff Wigley said:

    Cox is currently in 1st with 45 votes, followed closely by Bond with 42. Summa has moved into 3rd place with 21, just ahead of Ludescher with 20.

    August 7, 2008
  2. Rob Hardy said:

    The Northfield News has the same poll, and the same results (though with different numbers of votes). Cox is further out in front, though.

    August 7, 2008
  3. Patrick Enders said:

    It’s too late to vote?

    August 7, 2008
  4. I’m shocked, Griff, that I wasn’t included as a write-in response on this straw poll, just out of respect for my well-established credentials.

    Oh well. We can all be as “elevated” as I.

    August 7, 2008
  5. Griff Wigley said:

    I’ll keep the poll open till Aug. 17, Patrick. The poll plugin prevents multiple voting by the same person, using a combination of IP address and cache. So if Felicity voted from your house, you probably won’t be able to vote.

    August 7, 2008
  6. Griff Wigley said:

    FYI, the Northfield News poll is easily abused. I just voted 4 times from my house, once each via Firefox and IE from two different computers. I could keep doing that over and over just by clearing the cache in the browsers.

    August 7, 2008
  7. Patrick Enders said:

    Griff,
    I don’t know about Felicity’s voting habits, but I’m at work (on my home laptop) when I’m trying to vote.

    Also, based on my knowledge of Felicity’s voting preferences, I’m pretty sure that the votes I’m seeing on my machine are not hers.

    August 7, 2008
  8. Patrick Enders said:

    Thus, the problem(s) with anonymous online polls. Any such results (here or there) should be taken with very large grains of salt.

    Of course, if you’ve ever looked at the previous Nfld News poll results, you’d already know they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on.

    August 7, 2008
  9. Griff Wigley said:

    Patrick, try clearing your browser’s cache and cookies for Locally Grown before you depart work and see if that allows you to vote.

    August 7, 2008
  10. Tracy Davis said:

    Patrick – I’d say you’ll have to take the LoGro polls with a few grains of salt, and the NNews polls with a 25-lb bag of salt. Griff and Sean have taken great pains to ensure that it’s not easy to stuff the ballot box.

    August 8, 2008
  11. It’s still quite possible, however, not that I’m advocating for any corruption.

    We have enough of that already without my advocacy.

    Thanks for the poll, Griffley. Despite your bewildering silence on the issue, I’ve written my own name in on it, though I have to scroll to just the right place to line up my name with the others.

    Also, it’s hard to write letters that small on your monitor with a Sharpie…

    Oh well, what I don’t sacrifice for democracy.

    August 8, 2008
  12. Patrick Enders said:

    That’s almost a dare. 🙂

    I was able to vote when I got home last night. Now I guess it’s up to Felicity to figure out how to register her opinions.

    August 8, 2008
  13. Anne Bretts said:

    There are factors other than technology that would cause a difference between the Northfield News poll and the one here. Readers here are far more familiar with Victor Summa and David Ludescher and their views than people who read the News, while people on both sites are likely to be familiar with Ray Cox and Dixon Bond. In fact, both polls show similar rankings for Cox and Bond, while Ludescher and Summa rank higher here. These are self-selected voting exercises, not controlled scientific surveys, so I would be shocked if the results didn’t turn out this way.
    So just where is the News poll unreliable? I could see that if the two frontrunners were vastly different, and the vote totals for the bottom people here were a lot higher in the News tabulations, you could make a case that multiple voting was skewing results.
    The two polls seem to be an obvious and expected reflection of their audiences.
    Really, there are flaws with both sites, but the constant News bashing is unwarranted and frankly, not in keeping with the tone of civility that’s supposed to operate here. Let’s play nice.

    August 8, 2008
  14. Patrick Enders said:

    Anne,
    One flaw in the Nfld News poll is that I’ve voted three times (just to confirm how very easy it is, of course). And there’s nothing to even slightly hinder anyone with a strong opinion from casting 5, 50 or 5000 votes.

    From the excellent series “Blackadder the Third,” starring Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr. Bean):

    [Interviewer]: 1 voter; 16,472 votes. A slight anomaly…?

    Edmund Blackadder: Not really, Mr. Hanna — you see, [my candidate] may look like a monkey who’s been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but he is a brilliant politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in his policies.

    http://blackadder.powertie.org/transcripts/3/1/

    August 8, 2008
  15. Anne Bretts said:

    Patrick, I’m well aware of the potential to skew the results. I’m just saying that even with you and Griff admitting some multiple voting, it doesn’t appear that there are enough multiple votes to render this poll out of line with expectations.
    If the two bottom contenders here were the top vote-getters there, it would indicate some serious tampering. That doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, at first glance one might assume the results here were augmented to give two contenders better rankings. As I said, since we know that’s not the case, it’s probably a reflection of the circle of people on this site rather than the general public.
    That means their poll can be influenced by technology and the polls here can be influenced by the politics of the readership. Both polls have shortcomings, but offer interesting information and entertainment.
    All I’m saying is that the casual bashing of the integrity of the News is tiresome and unfair. Point out specific errors, but be as respectful of the paper as you ask us to be of other small businesses that struggle to maintain their presence in town.
    The glitch in their technology is unfortunate, and one hopes they will correct it as they continue to upgrade their website. They are struggling with technology as Locally Grown is struggling with its experiment in representative journalism. All these attempts at expanding horizons should be applauded and held accountable, but shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

    August 8, 2008
  16. Patrick Enders said:

    Anne,
    My point is, there is no way that the Northfield News online opinion survey can be said to truly represent anything, except that an unknown number of hands entered a certain number of votes for a certain set of options.

    The fact that the results happen to fit your expectations is not proof of any kind of external validity.

    The LoGro poll may be slightly better run, but it still is only a tally of people who hang around here, who felt like clicking, and who don’t have a husband who votes from the same IP address. It might also be stacked by people in any number of ways: voting from work, voting from coffee shops, whatever.

    These things should be considered amusements, and little more.

    August 8, 2008
  17. Anne Bretts said:

    Patrick, we agree. I don’t think either poll generates enough passion for the kind of effort you describe. After all, this isn’t Dancing with the Stars or American Idol:-).

    August 8, 2008
  18. Griff Wigley said:

    Dixon has crept back into the lead over Ray.

    Total Voters: 113.

    August 11, 2008
  19. Griff Wigley said:

    ooh, Victor and Dave are tied for turd third. heh.

    August 12, 2008

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