It is a new year, and so I am going to start these up again.
Vote in the MyDD straw poll.
I think the changing field of candidates should significantly reduce ballot stuffing, considering our past difficulties with Bayh supporters. Still, there has been recorded stuffing on behalf of Edwards and Clark in the past, but hopefully conducting this late at night will help reduce that problem. Also, here is my standard plea to potential poll stuffers:
It isn't that I think stuffing is wrong. On a moral level, there is nothing wrong with it at all. It is just that I would love to see what regular readers of MyDD actually think about the 2008 Democratic primaries. Please, I urge you, do not taint this poll by sending your blog readers, you email list, your MySpace group, your Facebook group, or your Yahoo group to alter the results. Think about this for a moment--wouldn't it be better to know where your candidate stands among MyDD readers, than it would to overtly skew the results of a poll to make it seem as though MyDD readers are behind your candidate when, in fact, they are not? Don't you want to know where you candidate actually stands among MyDD readers? If I were behind one candidate, I would want to know where my candidate stood. Skewing the results tells you nothing except that you are able to skew the results.
Anyway, you can't skew the results without my knowing. I have access to every vote made in polls like this, including a history of votes in chronological order, and as such I know when stuffing is taking place. Whether that stuffing is for Clark, Edwards, Feingold, Richardson, Bayh, Gore or whoever (I have seen stuffing on behalf of every candidate I named), is it really more useful to you to have me broadcast on the front page of MyDD that you stuffed the poll than it is to know where your candidate stands among the potential contenders? Please tell me it is not.
Rise above Freeperdom. Don't stuff the poll.
Now, with that said, please
vote in the January MyDD straw poll. I have included the ten candidates making the most serious moves toward running. If you don't like the choices, or think I should have included someone else, then just select "Not Sure" in the poll.