What a difference a day makes. When I voted last night (around 11:30 p.m.) Slanton had a big lead in the Nissan vote.
As I sign in tonight, ready to call on all Ohio State fans to step up, to return the favor that Troy Smith has given us, I find that the results have changed. At 10:00 p.m. Eastern time, Smith now leads Slanton with 35% of the vote to Slanton’s 21%.
I haven’t been following this poll all that close and just checked in last night for the first time in a couple of weeks so I don’t know if this sort of swing is normal. I was also more than a little shocked to see that Slanton had 69% of the vote but I was just as shocked to see it come back so quick. I didn’t record the actual number of votes to see if there was a sudden influx of voting over the last 24 hours.
If nothing else, this leaves me a little concerned. The way I understand it, the winner of the ESPN/Nissan poll will get Nissan’s Heisman vote. As a former Buckeye, now living in Maryland, my confidence in electronic voting systems is anything but strong. And while I have no idea what will happen to my vote next Tuesday, I felt secure in the fact that my ESPN/Nissan vote was safe and secure.
Now, I don’t know what to think.
We, members of The Buckeye Nation, must monitor this situation closely. When tested, hackers were able to break into the ESPN/Nissan voting machines with minimal effort and vote repeatedly–compromising the validity of this election. In other reports, voters reported casting their vote for Smith and seeing one more number added to the Slanton column.
Most concerning is that in some voting districts, mostly in the Columbus area, voters have reported very long download times. Many of those voters went to other web pages before casting a vote. There have been no such reports coming from Morgantown. Even with West Virginia’s limited, dial up access, voters reported being able to call in, request that the server be switched from fax to internet, log in and vote in a minimal amount of time.
A paper receipt would be the first step in solving this problem.
At the very least, be sure to log your weekly vote. Just think how bad it would look for Slanton if West Virginia made it to the BCS game, with Heisman winner Steve Slanton in tow, only to be decimated by the Ohio State defense. Unfortunately, when Slanton is held to negative yards, without a paper trail, there will be no way to go back and verify the vote that may have put him over the top in the Heisman vote.
