Political Brackets

Round 3 of my March Madness contest — the 2012 Republican presidential nomination — has ended, and there's a lot to report.

Don't forget to vote in Round 4. But first, a look at the latest results.

 

First off, the noncontroversial ones. Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who chairs the House Republican Conference and was seeded sixth, defeated fellow Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a seventh seed, by 64-35 percent. Jim DeMint (No. 8), the freshman senator from South Carolina, doubled the tally of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (No. 2), 66-33 percent, in what was considered an upset. And in the one blowout of Round 3, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (No. 3) crushed Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida (No. 4) by a 90-9 percent tally. All three contests drew about 47,000 votes, give or take.

Then there was Ron Paul vs. Jon Huntsman,

Much rancor resulted from the Round 2 matchup in which Paul, the congressman from Texas (No. 6), handily defeated Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts (No. 1). As the huge number of comments that followed my posting indicated, both the Romney and Paul camps accused each other of ballot-stuffing, charging that people voted multiple times to rig the results. My initial posting on those results quoted several people who put the blame squarely on the Paul folks, though in an update to the post it became clear to me that no one candidate was solely responsible for the shenanigans, and I indicated as such.

Oh, did I tell you this is all supposed to be in fun?

Well, lo and behold, as Round 3 was coming to a close, Huntsman, a seventh seed who is the governor of Utah, was leading Paul. And more than 300,000 votes were cast in that contest. That suggests that some shenanigans were afoot here as well, perhaps by folks unfriendly to Paul.

Since I quoted many Paul foes in the last go-around, let me quote a Paul fan this time. This, from John MacArthur of Washington, D.C.:

After your last March Madness article regarding the "unfair play," I kept a close eye on this last poll.

Ron Paul was leading Jon Huntsman the entire time, with about a 70%. All the Ron Paul supporters in our community agreed not to vote more than once. But, then at about 4 am ET this morning, I was woken up with text message that the early morning spamming had started again in exactly the same way as it had for Romney when he was far behind Ron Paul.

Within a matter of about an hour, the poll votes had doubled from 60,000 to 120,000, putting Hunstman suddenly ahead of Ron Paul. It was a clear sign of cheating again.

So, we contacted many people in the Ron Paul community and we all started voting as quickly as we could to counteract whoever was running these macros again — our guess is the Romney people again, who already came to one of our forums and admitted to running macros the last time.

We were just barely able to recover when the poll ended.

Anyway, I wanted to write you, because it does seem that you were unfair on Ron Paul in your last article, though you said it was because you only received emails from other supporters.

I'm surprised that no Ron Paul supporters wrote you to complain of the cheating, but then it's often the ones cheating that are the first to cry foul.

I read the comments on your article too, and it is clear there is an overwhelming number of Ron Paul supporters commenting and rating comments. That alone is a clear measure of interest and support.

Anyway, it was a fun poll, but it feels like a complete waste if you cannot at least limit the votes to one per person or computer.

Well, we're back to controversy. Or maybe not. Whatever, we're down to the Final Four, and it's time to vote in the latest round. The results will be announced on Friday.

Comments? Criticism? Yawns? Send 'em in!

Tags: On The Ballot