Please do not cheat..!
We have been advised that about 300 votes have been removed from our polling total in the 2005 Weblog Awards as a result of cheating.
We either have an overzealous misguided supporter, or this is an effort to try and discredit us by those opposed to our work and democracy in Zimbabwe. We have no way of getting to the thoughts behind the action.
So let us be very clear: Sokwanele does not support cheating or the ‘rigging of elections’. In fact, our blog was started during the March parliamentary elections and we spent a great deal of time exposing fraudulent activities. We circulated the rules of this competition to our mailing list, and we have published them here on our blog, and on the front page of our website. The rules are clear - please abide by them.
Sadly, we have also been advised that in order to ban the cheating addresses from accessing the site again, the organiser has been forced to block a range of ip addresses:
Since three of the addresses were from a dialup poll I’ve had to ban that subnet - a sanction that may be reconsidered
This unfortunately means that genuine voters who were not cheating will be affected as well. This means that Zimbabwean voters dialing up via that subnet will not be able to vote - but hey, cheer up, you guys should be used to that feeling by now!
On a less ironic note, we have received emails from confused Zimbabwean supporters saying that they can no longer access the polling website and we will respond to all those queries on an individual basis.
Despite the disappointment of realising things weren’t going as well as we thought, we want to re-state the sentiments expressed in this earlier post. Many thanks to all who have supported us. Keep voting - but not more than once a day!
