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Telling Vote

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: August 13, 2008

Through decades of ups and downs, the city of Port Richey has had one thing going for it: almost everyone has feelings, for good or ill, about the coastal hamlet and its civic affairs. That was evident again in recent days as the city conducted an admittedly unscientific poll on its Web site.

The subject of the online vote was the city's new slogan. Students at the St. Petersburg campus of the University of South Florida created nine different designs for the signs that will welcome people to town and sport the city's recently adopted slogan, "Pasco's Gateway to the Gulf." City officials decided to get a hand from residents in selecting one of the welcome sign designs.

As it turned out, there were 2,500 votes cast via the city Web site. Since the city's population is only around 3,200 that would be a whopping 78 percent of everyone in town casting a vote in the sign-design contest - if everyone had cast just one vote.

In fact, the city's information technology specialist, Kevin Hamm, made no attempt to limit people to one vote and said some people had cast multiple votes. Mayor Richard Rober reportedly was a bit miffed about this apparent multiple voting, labeling it as manipulation.

Maybe. On the other hand, what area city inspires enough passion to have cyber ballot-box stuffing - if that is what happened - in a sign design contest?

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