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Reuters
Bristol Palin performs during Monday's semifinals of "Dancing With the Stars" on ABC. She and partner Mark Ballas qualified for next Monday's final dance-off against Kyle Massey, Jennifer Grey and their partners.
Does Bristol Palin, the daughter of that politically powerful hockey mom from Alaska, have the best moves on "Dancing with the Stars"? Some critics say she's definitely improved as the season has progressed. But the judges consistently give her among the lowest marks -- meaning it's the people, the voters, who have kept her around for Monday night's finale.
And these voters, according to theories swirling on the Internet, appear to be politically motivated. Having Palin tear up the dance floor on national TV is considered a boost for the conservative Tea Party movement. To keep the votes coming in, the party is using social media effectively to rally the base behind the young Palin mom.
The campaign apparently includes exploitation of a loophole in ABC's e-mail voting feature. The loophole is explained as a technicality in the system that allows voters to register an infinite number of email addresses and vote, vote, vote. The e-mail addresses are never validated, such as what happens when you sign up for a Facebook or PayPal account.
"Lord have mercy, I voted for 3 hours online! I got 300 in," one Palin fan wrote in a comment on the HillBuzz blog, which is leading the charge on Bristol Palin's behalf.
ABC tries to safeguard against such abuse. "Computers must allow cookies, have Javascript enabled and have the latest version of Flash installed," the company explains on its Web site. The implication is that cookies are used to determine whether the computer user has already voted. An integrity assessment is conducted against each online vote, including security measures that are meant to catch and remove fraudulent voting.
The New York Daily News quoted the show's executive producer, Conrad Green, as saying that multiple e-mailed votes would be wiped out if they came from the same IP address -- though he declined to spell out exactly how the system matches up e-mails with those numerical Internet routing codes.
Even all of those safeguards may not be enough. The pro-Palin groundswell is reportedly leading ABC to consider changing its voting system to give more weight to the judges' assessment -- and less weight to the voice of the people.
Open voting process
Thad Hall is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Utah and a research affiliate with the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. He told me that the voting systems on reality-TV shows such as "Dancing With the Stars" and "American Idol" are designed to gauge popular support for the various contestants, and "they do that by creating a very open process." In other words, this isn't supposed to be a "one person, one vote" election.
Stopping voter fraud is likely a low priority, Hall said. They could put in controls to more stictly authenticate voters such as requiring viewers to register through their cable box and limit households to a set number of votes. But at the end of the day, "the show is interested in one thing: they are interested in ratings," he said.
Measures to more strictly police the voting would only be put in place if the controversy about the fairness of the system drove viewers away. As long as the controversy boosts ratings, it's "a good thing."
Elections that matter
As important as Bristol Palin may be for keeping the Tea Party in the public eye, the fairness of the voting process on "Dancing With the Stars" pales in comparison with an election that actually has political consequences. Consider, for example, the race for the White House in 2012, in which Bristol's mom could be a contender.
In a real-world online election, steps can be taken to cut down on voter fraud, Hall said. The key is an authentication process that separates the act of registering to vote from the act of voting. Estonia, for example, has successfully held nationwide online voting, under conditions that independent security audits have shown to be effective and reliable. Estonia's rigorous authentication process makes it difficult for an individual to vote more than once.
Hall said nationwide online voting is unlikely to ever take hold in the U.S., but efforts are under way to make it an option for difficult-to-reach populations such as overseas military personnel. While there's "always a possibility of people doing bad things" with such a system, he said, election officials "can make it really hard to do bad things."
What do you think? Will online voting ever be secure and fair enough to reliably choose winners of reality shows and the White House? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More on the Palins and reality-TV voting:
- Palin girls' hateful words common on Facebook
- Upset by Bristol's 'Dancing' luck, man shoots TV
- Palin's success raises tempers, boosts ratings
- Bristol says 'haters' are trying to 'destroy' her
- Poll: Sarah Palin most polarizing of 2012 crowd
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on http://twitter.com/b0yle.
Leave a Comment:
A teen age dropout,unwed mother, no skill, no talent, no personality with a quitter for a mother who has prostituted herself and her family to make a buck from a group of uneducated band of morons who no nothing about why this country is in the condition that it is. Hannity, Limbough, Beck... The new " Three Stooges " pulling the strings. This is a sad, sad, setting for those fighting two wars to protect the shambles this country has become. Palin, and the Three Stooges... all millionaires fighting for the poor? Taking our country back? You are all sick, sick, bastards.
It's humourous to see PDS (Palin Deranged Supporters) go mad defending their Whiney Queen and their Whiney Princess.
Mean people in this world. Stop hacking on the poor girl. She is doing the best she can and making money doing it. At least she's not walking the streets making money.
You're right, she gave it away for free!
So did Brandy she too was an unwed mother - hypocrital of you just to mention one side
Why is it a "voting process" and an "authentication process" instead of just "voting" and "authentication"? If it's already a process, you don't have to add the word process to make anyone understand.
Is it fair? No it isn't, but is it fair to pair experienced performers with those who have never had that kind of exposure? I'm certainly no Bristol Palin fan, but she is representative of the majority of people and how they would perform under similar circumstances. She has shown improvement over the weeks of the show, unlike Kate Goslin who just seemed to get worse, and had an attitude to go with it.
Overall, she has certainly shown a lot of improvement. On the other hand, quite a few of the other "stars" this season also started with no dance experience, consistently improved, and ended up off the show when their actual dancing had shown substantially more improvement than Bristol's. Most dancers, whatever one might say of their overall improvement, would not have survived the absolute unmitigated disaster of the "gorilla suit" dance. Given that when she arrived, the whole country knew her mother and she was famous only for being her mother's daughter, the fact that she survived the gorilla suit dance tells me that some portion of her support is coming from people who don't actually watch the show. I'm sure some are voting for the underdog, some find her endearing, or appreciate her improvement. Absolutely. Lots of genuinely beloved people with comparatively weak dancing skills stick around much longer than they "should." But they don't last all the way to the finals. Somebody who has been consistently at the bottom through the entire season, who does not have strong dancing skills, does not have strong performance skills, but makes it to the finals anyway, is a new thing. Usually there's room to argue about whether the folks who made it into the final are, or are not, the strongest dancers. But they've never before been so consistently weakest...
If you didn't see the gorilla suit dance, watch it, but only if you have a really strong stomach. It was intensely painful to watch. She had no clue what direction she was supposed to go, with what foot, through the whole thing. The first few steps she was in the suit, and I figured she must not be seeing well enough through the eye holes. Then she removed the suit, and never did seem to figure out what dance Mark was doing. Thank goodness she hasn't danced that badly since.
An easy fix to the problem, get rid of the internet voting and only allow phone in votes and limit the number of calls from each phone number. In fact this is or at least was in place prior and worked.
By initiating, maintaining, and condoning this travesty, I hope DWTS enjoys their new conservative fanbase. The rest of us will be turning the show off forever. Perhaps every dance from next season on should be a FOXtrot.
Or maybe they should just move to Fox.
But only if they are interested in ratings.
If having a baby out of wedlock makes Bristol a "teen age advocate", I should be the Champion Advocate! One abortion 2 children born out of wedlock and a single mother of 5, I am MORE than qualified. Except, unlike Bristol, I can't "revirginize" myself!
How about a write-in vote for Brandy? Worked in Alaska.
I have finally come to understand that I can't believe what I read on emails or internet sites. Anyone can post anything and a lot of us believe it. Dirty tricks continue to flurish
Ditto
Bristol Palin "dances" like a poorly operated marionette, or an Alaskan version of the dancing bear.
If it is truly determined that there was cheating going on regarding the voting, she should be disqualified on that basis. Popularity voting is one thing...cheating is another.
Kumquat
Your talking about the votes for a stupid show, why don't you people get this wind up for votes that matter like political elections where voter fraud does real damage. We have groups like acorn and seiu entering fake votes obtained from cemeteries, cartoon network, and whatever drunk or crack whore they can find still able to sign their name onto an already filled out registry and absentee voter card. How about a dangerous volatile psycho like al franklin getting into the senate because voter cards from prison inmates where illegally allowed in are just a few examples of what you should be paying attention to. State reps in the house and senate don't just effected that state, these people effect the whole country and when psychos like pelosi & franklen or corrupt criminals like Barney Frank get in from corruption or stupidity it hurts the whole country.
You mean, "WOE is me." Maybe you were thinking about your horsey.
What kind of lesson are these coservabaggers teaching their children about American civics and ethics. Good family values, especially when Bristol is such a gleaming example to kids alone.
Wow, look, now the mama sow is ripping on reality shows. How does a family of complete and utter idiots captivate this country like this? Because when the neocons see Sarah was mildly attractive and dumb, they get all over it like flies on stank.
It's the Three Stooges Syndrome (TSS). You watch the show every week, Moe slaps the other two in one swoop over and over again, and yet, there you are the next week, hardly containing youself on waiting for him to do the exact same thing over and over again. Americans can't get enough of watching a train wreck over and over again, either. That's why the Canadians own our television shows today, they learned this from Buster Keaton!!
Upon further review of this picture and a full torso image posted earlier, I would imagine Levi (the dumbo) Johnson's tongue is scraping the ground.
Back to the voting. Some person wrote that she voted for 3 hours and voted 300 times. The voting lasts only 30 minutes after the show is over, so don't hang your "Cheating" claims on that kind of information. The article is informative and does not draw any conclusions, it just talks about possibilities for cheating but does not find that cheating actually existed. I have 3 e-mail address that I use regularly and voted using them. If my wife had an e-mail address and if my son that one, we could have voted even more. I didn't just make up a lot of e-mail addresses just so I could vote. Bristol is my favorite and I voted for her because of that. She is a brave young woman and has taken a lot of abuse from the various comments on this article as well as others I have read. Let her alone. After all, she is going to win next week and what do you say about that!
Go Bristol, Go Girl and do your best in the Free Style dance next Monday. I'll be voting for you to the maximum of my resources.
HOW TO VOTE
VOTING HOURS: Voting is open Monday from the start of the show until 11am Eastern/8am Pacific Tuesday.
From the website - looks more like it's open for 12 hours to me. You Teahadis REALLY need to fact-check before mouth-open. Thanks for playing, though. Now take a hike!
How are we supposed to teach our children to do the right thing when Pailin and her minions reward their children for dropping out of school, getting knocked up and gaming the system? How do I look my children in the eyes and tell them honestly that cheaters never prosper?
It's not the kid's fault that her mother is a putz. Let her have her day
Cosmic Log, eh? Dislike. If you say you're a Leopard, be a Leopard, not a tiger.
I am not interested in DWTS (I have never even watched a single episode) and don't appreciate my "Like" on FB supporting this Palin rant.
Live long and prosper. I won't be checking in again.
I never watch reality shows anyway, because they're anything but. That being said, the sad thing about this is that the girl will be worthless to even herself after all of this false display of support for non-talent.
Interesting little thing I picked up on in the story. HillBuzz is one of those sites that was originally formed to oppose Obama and support Clinton (ala PUMA), who then went way to the far right when Obama won the DNC nomination in protest.
Amazing what some will do to support a radical agenda, eh?