WFN disallows 1,500 fishy Dauphin votes
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/08/2010 (5522 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
You don’t get ahead by cheating.
So says the World Fishing Network (WFN), which subtracted about 1,500 votes from Dauphin’s bid to become Canada’s Ultimate Fishing Town because of votes entered with false email addresses.
On Monday afternoon, Dauphin quickly flip-flopped from first to second in the standings and a post was made on the contest website’s blog announcing the mass removal of fraudulent votes.
"For those of you keeping an eye on your votes or your competitions votes you may find that some towns have lost some votes which is not a mistake. (The World Fishing Network) is trying to keep the voting period as fair as possible and would like every town to have a fair and equal chance of winning. Please remember that you may vote with only one single email address per person and may only vote once every 12 hours with your email," the blog read.
Don Stokotelny of Intermountain Sport Fishing Enhancement, which runs one of Manitoba’s best youth fishing programs in Manitoba and will receive the cash prize to put toward these programs should Dauphin win the title, was in contact with the WFN to find out why the votes were lost.
"Every week the WFN does a review on all the email addresses, checking whether they’re legitimate or not. Apparently there were some people punching in whatever. Now they’re doing more security to make sure they’re all legitimate. We don’t know who it was or where they were submitting the votes from, but we were told that shouldn’t happen anymore," Stokotelny said.
Carla Wolfenden, the tourism and events co-ordinator for Dauphin Economic Development and Tourism, said the loss in votes was a disappointing setback for the town’s campaign.
"It was frustrating, for sure. But I think the word is out that people need to smarten up. We’ve been shaking our fingers a little bit warning people to play fair," she said.
Dauphin, with 20,061 votes, sat second to Port Alberni, Sask.’s 20,194 votes as of Wednesday at 10:30 p.m.
But despite the loss of pride, Dauphin is still almost a shoo-in for the final round of voting.
Both cities are more than 14,000 votes ahead of third place Nipawin, Sask., in the West Region. The top two towns in each region make the final round of voting, along with four wild cards chosen by the WFN.
Wolfenden says the city is already looking forward to the finals.
"We don’t want to seem too cocky, but we’re getting ready to do some more campaigning. I’m excited. Even if we don’t win, we’ve had a lot of fun doing it," she said.