A review of a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online poll on Gov. Corbett’s scheme to dismantle the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) showed that hackers who favor privatization had skewed the results.
“We demonstrated that the poll was being rigged. The privateers are so desperate that they are now hacking media polls. They’re losing on the merits and now have to cheat,” Wendell W. Young, IV, the President of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 and Chair of the UFCW of PA Wine and Spirits Council, said today.
Young said that last week Local 1776 saw evidence that multiple votes were registering rapidly on the Post-Gazette poll even long after the newspaper had removed the link to the poll from its website.
Votes were still being counted in support of privatization.
“Those weren’t people voting. It was a computer or computers rigged to vote time and time again. I don’t know who was created these fake votes, although I have my suspicions,” Young said.
IT professionals confirmed that votes were being generated automatically and repeatedly on the link, and showed how it was being done. The union notified the Post-Gazette editors, who informed them that the results of the poll would not be published.
“The forces behind privatization know that they don’t have the facts or the people of Pennsylvania on their side,” Young said. “If they did, they would not have to resort to faking and rigging news media polls.
“Instead of trying to fool the public, they should recognize the common sense of steps to modernize the Wine & Spirits stores so that they create even more revenue for all taxpayers.”
Young said these steps include more Wine & Spirits stores in supermarkets, more stores open and additional hours on Sunday, and inventory and personnel policy changes that in total could create an additional $100 million a year for the state treasury, in addition to the $530 million that the stores created last year in profits and taxes to benefit all Pennsylvanians.
For more information on the poll hacking, contact William Epstein, 610-505-5105
Moral of the story: Online polls aren’t worth the bits that it takes to create them.
Bingo, porknwhiskey. Bulls eye.
I’m a “privateer” myself, and I mostly found this funny. It’s hardly a scandal, and it’s hardly an “act of desperation,” when every single serious scientific poll shows Pennsylvanians solidly in favor of privatization (which is probably why the UFCW has never funded one). It’s more like a prank, and Wendell reliably rose to the bait.
Let me get this straight:
Legitimate scientific poll after legitimate scientific poll by reputable polling companies show that Pennsylvanians largely to overwhelmingly support at least some degree of privatization of the liquor store system and the ability to buy beer in lots smaller than a case, if not outright privatization and liberalization of the entire booze market statewide.
Yet newspaper website “poll” after newspaper website “poll” get swamped with votes against such privatization, because of easily documented e-mail blasts, Facebook pitches (seriously, they have a “Save the PLCB” account!), and lobbying efforts from the UFCW union management and cadres of State Store employees to “stuff” these electronic “ballot boxes.”
And when ONE such newspaper website poll finally catches up to the actual opinions of the commonwealth’s citizens thanks to e-mail and Facebook mentions from pro-privatization activists (grass-roots, to boot), THEY have the unmitigated GALL to call it “vote-rigging” and “fakery”?????
Pot calling the kettle black. Hypocrisy in extremis.
“Editor Zero” turns out to be strangely spot-on as a name: This is a regurgitated UFCW press release, from the union representing State Store workers, without ONE IOTA of follow-up, editing, verification, or fact-checking by the “editor”: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/05/ufcw-pa-poll-hacked-idUSnPnPH71314+160+PRN20130305
Please ask Wendell when the investigation of this poll will start?
http://www.facebook.com/groups/174548595911662/photos/#!/photo.php?fbid=306946159382123&set=o.174548595911662&type=3&theater
Here is the link to the poll in question. Doesn’t look removed to me.
http://old.post-gazette.com/polls/Default.asp?pollID=4263