Is some manipulating this website to cheat an online poll/contest?

If there is a sudden change in results it is possible someone is manipulating the results, it may be possible for the author of the poll to change the votes and as the poll is hosted on another website it is unlikely it is cheat proof, polls are not the most reliable method of voting especially when hosted externally and there is always a chance the author has manipulated the results. There are many different ways of cheating polls and you can't really tell.

In the end polls can easily be manipulated and if you have seen a sudden change in results it is likely someone has messed with them somehow.

If you incorporate and IP address scheme and isolate the UNIQUE records ->>>IP address, you can prevent future voting from that location.

The poll is hosted on a third party website so that probably isn't an option and tazmajazz is not the author of the poll or the website

considering the content...it would matter if we were polling who would be the best President.

hmm, I wonder if its some kind of IP spoofing then...

the content isnt what matters, I just wanna call out someone for cheating if theres some easy way I can find that they could have done it.

that would be hard if you're 3rd party. best to be in control.

Well sense you are dealing with one naighborhood I would suggest you count the number of people in the naighborhood that could posibly vote and then count the number of people that have voted.  If the latter exceed the former than you obviously have a discrepency.  My advice is to use a simple forum/blog.  Forget a voting system unless you want to develop one of your own.  A person would post a comment that gives their name, their phone number, maybe address, whatever.  Maybe limit it to one vote per phone number, or one vote per address.  That way there are a limited number of votes and one person would have to impersonate another to get multiple votes.  With such a small population of voters I would think some logical deduction would lead you to an answer to your questions of cheating and some simple rules such as what I suggested would prevent it.

Personally.... I like Annie.

to add to purfus comment..

You're welcome to jump on my board

http://www.superman808.com

You can enable voters to be guests or force them to be members to vote.

Good call irwin.  Are there really 400+ people in your "naigborhood"??

Are there any webmasters in your neighborhood?  At any given time, I have access to a lot of IP addresses.  Someone with a dial-up account could come up with quite a few too.  If the results suddenly spiked, it's almost definitely some sort of foul play...but if it's that important to them to rig an online pet contest, let them have it...they obviously have nothing else.

well, I dont know any webmasters here so I dont really have anyone to ask. the results definitely suddenly spiked by about 70 votes in a few hours so someone did something for sure. Obviously its not that important but its the principle of it :-)
the rules say I can campaign and I think distributing that link out to everyone I know is acceptable, besides they're not playing fair anyways. I wish I had a high traffic website to post the link on. very few people visit the few sites I have :-)

oh and yes, there's gotta be more than 400 people in this neighborhood.

irwinpks, I'm not I understand what your suggestion is...could you clarify plz?

thx all!

taz

Well, I actually meant that webmasters would be a likely source of the foul play as they can have access to lots of sites.  But if you can campaign and you think you've been wronged, go all out. ;)

jeesh, yeah, they cheated again, their votes went up another 70 over night. I'm not above foul play but even a webmaster wouldnt have access to 50+ IP's. I think theres some way that they are easily spoofing their IP on the fly. its the only way they could rack up that many votes that quick...

here is the message from the person who must have jacked the votes up:

"Don't hate the playa hate the game. I'm callin up all my b*tchez... don't call it a come back. "

I'm missing something.

Perhaps you want to put that poll on a server that has member based authentication.  That will surely limit the number of opportunites, especially not voting anonymously.

a bit over my head, and I dont know any local webmaster. looks like I've been out-teched :-)
anyone else know a webmaster with access to a pool of IP's who could help?

taz

"anyone else know a webmaster with access to a pool of IP's who could help?"

This is a rare find, unless you have full control over the polling/IP address/content...the answer to this is that you "can't"

thnx for the help guys, didnt really know how to split up the points. take care!

taz