There’s a forum of sorts called Chan (generally about Manga and Anime

Comment on General Election 2017 by David.

There’s a forum of sorts called Chan (generally about Manga and Anime apparently) and a section of it called /b/ and looking through the log files for this site I can link about 50 visitors to that domain. I couldn’t find the specific post as it’s got a LOT of posts and what was on page 1 yesterday could be page 20-30 by now!

There was also a post on another forum yesterday specifically saying vote Monster Raving Loony Party, I see 24 visitors from that page.

I looked at both of these yesterday, but because they only account for about 75 visitors I ruled them out as THE cause.

The log files for the site are relatively accurate, so if it was the users of those two sites that made the votes (was over 900 of them) I don’t know why they aren’t showing up in the log files.

Looks like I was wrong about them being fake votes though (I hate being wrong :-)).

This does explain the multiple IP addresses used, they were real visitors, but as it was a hoax/joke it explains why the IP addresses are mostly not from the UK (so can’t vote in the next election), which is one of the reasons why I thought they were fake votes (most of the other votes are from UK IP addresses).

I’m tempted to reinstate the 900 votes I removed, because even though they aren’t all from the UK (looks like 10% are UK based for certain) there is an argument they are real people voting in a poll. My main reason for deleting them was because I believed they were all one person. So my main reason is no longer valid.

Unless others make a concerted effort to keep posting votes for that party over and over again, long term the other parties will catch up and pass them as more natural visitors find this poll through Google (it’s ranked high in Google for general election poll searches).

Polls been up 10 weeks and Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have gained over 1,500 votes with no outside influence, so by the next election they will pass that party easily.

I’m going to reinstate them even though I know it makes the poll less valid, but the same is true for some of the BNP votes, but for different reasons.

The controversy :-)

David