Navel-gazing writ small.

Geez, the only thing I'd take from this is don't pay any of these commissioners anything, they want it so bad, I don't think money even matters anymore.

Good god, what is happening to this town?

Portland has lost its collective mind

Well, more accurately: One person with too much free time has lost his or her mind.

No, actually, the fact that this is in the news shows that the media, too, has lost its mind.

The fact that candidates are competing with each other to subject themselves to "Candidates Gone Wild" is also crazy.

The supposed scarcity of stage space for all of the candidates, both at CGW and at the City Club -- particularly in the council race for Adams's seat, which is a close, six-way horse race -- is also insane.

I'm shocked and deeply dismayed that anyone, especially a "Clean Money" candidate, would try and game the Candidates Gone Wild web poll.

I'm even more surprised that anybody at Willamette Week thought there is any such thing as "reliable" online poll.

They don't exist absent a reliable method to tie a specific person to a specific computer: that's why telephone surveys are still the primary method of political polling.

Voting fraud in the CGW is bad. What suprises me is the complete lack of security -- basing the security on just the cookies is REALLY lame. There are so many better ways to have security in these things (IPs are the easiest).

What's even worse is that the idiots who tried to rig the votes were just as idiotic. Its really easy to spoof IP addresses (send information with the wrong IP information). I mean, if you're going to cheat, at least do it intelligently.

I don't know whether the fraud or the lack of creativity in the fraud is more upsetting.

I love CGW its a great forum, but I agree with you Jack there is no reason why all of the serious candidates shouldn't be able to participate. It seems like Fritz, Branam, Lewis, Bissonette, and Smith wouldn't take up too much "stage space." Especially now that there has been proof of cheating they should probably invite everybody to be fair to those who didn't cheat. Ionno maybe Branam will be DQed by the time CGW comes around and make things a little easier to whittle down.

To quote what Slashdot attaches to every one of its poll results:

"This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."

As that statment applies equally well to most any online poll, one has to wonder if CGW is actually important, or if someone in the CGW process is insane.

perhaps Branam is paying Busse per click

"Well, more accurately: One person with too much free time has lost his or her mind."

Puh-leeze VoE has been one joker after another:

- Boyles / Golovan
- Middaugh's steal
- Blackmer's non-call (Dozono/C Smith)
- Adams' call (on DOzono to the tune of $10000)
- Wine/food/movie parties on taxpayers money (MIddaugh/Branam)

My friends in the Bay Area are laughing at us as a bunch of hack amateurs.

I disagree with Bdunn. Roseland, or any venue in town for that matter, lacks the required "stage space" for any group with Chris Smith in it.

Sten's ego fit on it a couple of times.