The Cheshire Town Post

~ by Craig Houghton - July 19, 2007 ~

I appreciate the value of having an independent local paper. After all, democracy requires an informed electorate. Most of the time, they do a great job. This piece is not an attack on the Herald — it’s an attempt to spotlight a broken feature that’s been too often quoted and has serious potential for misuse. Please feel free to comment, discuss, or post your own front-page post in response. Bearing that in mind, I submit to you that the Cheshire Herald needs to fix their web poll.

I think we all realize that web polls are imperfect. We don’t expect the results to represent a fair cross-section of residents. We know that the results include only the voters that visit the Cheshire Herald web site and choose to participate.

However, few would assume that participants can vote repeatedly without danger of detection. And, they can.

Here’s the disclaimer:

“Note: This is intended as an informal public poll, reflecting only the opinions of those who choose to participate.”

We might be better served if it read:

“Note: This is intended as an informal public poll, reflecting the opinions of those who choose to participate and the poll author. The question may exhibit bias, and the participants may vote repeatedly. We will not disclose the number of votes received.”

Let me back this claim up. The Cheshire Herald web poll is driven by an email submit script, not web-polling software. Each time you vote, an email is sent to pollresults@cheshireherald.com. The content of the email is a simple ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or ‘No Opinion.’ There’s no unique IP address or sender info to identify the participant as a repeat customer. I think it’s necessary to note that I didn’t have to do anything sneaky to figure this out. One needs only to visit the poll, click View on your browser menu, and select the Source option. The Herald uses a free script from www.mindpalette.com, called NateMail, to drive the poll.

I wanted to see if participants could actually vote repeatedly without detection. So, I installed the software myself. I downloaded the same script they use. I installed it on my web site. I created a simple web page with a poll that submits data to the NateMail script using the exact same form settings they use. Then, I voted, repeatedly.

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If the poll is worth including in the paper, they need to use actual polling software. Here are some of the comments on Tim White Listens that tipped me off:

selected comment excerpts from Tim White Listens

Anonymous said…
At least 90% of Cheshire residents don’t know that the entire 400 acres can become malls and big box stores and that can have a devastating effect on our current business owners who are also our neighbors.

Given a choice, most would prefer more shopping closer to the center or west main.

Don’t ever believe a Cheshire Herald poll and that’s what most people refer to when they say people don’t mind the stores. If everything is explained to the people and a real statistically correct poll were taken, you would find the results a lot different.

Friday, July 06, 2007 1:01:00 PM

Anonymous said…
The following Poll is similar to the type that the Cheshire Herald runs. You may vote as many times as you want.

Anonymous said…
“Herald poll, Herald editorials are that Cheshire residents are overwhelmingly against residential. ”

The Herald poll is crap. If the people of Cheshire were told the truth of what these changes will allow and a real poll were taken, then the entire project including retail would be rejected. The people of Cheshire have been manipulated.

Thursday, July 05, 2007 10:54:00 AM