About the poll
I had high hopes that this new polling service would be more effective at preventing multiple voting, but alas, though it's better than the previous service, it's not fool-proof.
But one advantage is that it reports on duplicate votes, though I didn't turn this feature on until there had already been two valid votes for each, so these numbers and the total reported in the poll will always be off by 4.
The results as they stood early this morning were Rumler 46, Jacobs 14. This seemed a bit odd, so in the interest of fairness, I just spent about an hour copying and pasting all this data, sorting it, and finding the duplicates.
Here's what I found:
Of the 14 votes for Jacobs, two people were responsible for 4 votes each, or 8 of the total. The adjusted true vote total for Jacobs as of this morning is therefore 8 votes.
Of the 46 votes for Rumler, one person voted 5 times, one person voted 4 times, two people voted 3 times, and four people voted twice or 23 of the total. The adjusted true vote total for Rumler as of this morning is therefore 31.
So.... the actual true vote total for the poll as of around 8:00 this morning is:
- Jacobs - 8 votes
- Rumler - 31 votes
This poll service also allows you to ban IP addresses from participating in the poll. I've banned the people who have voted more than once to prevent them from voting further and so their votes will only be counted once, and I'll keep an eye on things from here out. If you haven't voted yet, vote away, but if you've already voted, don't try it.... you'll be busted.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 1/11/2006
10 comments
10 Comments:
Dope,
Are you sure about the multiple votes issue? I was curious if the poll had an IP address restriction on it, so I voted twice, and noticed that the stats didn't tabulate the second vote.
So (unless this is something that's specific to my computer) it appears that you can go through the motions of voting over and over again, yet the counter will only register your first vote.
Again, maybe it's just my computer, dope, can you check it out?
I also check the validity of the poll to see if it was possible to vote more than once. I got the same result of the counter not changing when I tried to vote twice.
If you'll allow me to get a little geeky with you, I can explain how some people are able to vote more than once while other's aren't.
If your computer is configured to give out it's address to other computers (and websites are hosted on computers) then when you vote in the poll, the computer which hosts the poll asks your computer who it is, your computer then tells it that it's 12.34.567.89 or some combination of numbers like that which is it's IP or internet protocol address. Every computer connected to the net is assigned a unique IP address. (and to make it more complicated, they can change, such as AOL which assigns a different one every time someone signs on.)
I'm not certain, but I imagine that the polling service also tracks voters by setting cookie files on their computers.
This is just a tiny little text file that it places on your computer with some code or other way of indentifying your computer.
When you go to vote for a second time, the site reads this cookie, and a code shows that you've already voted, and it then blocks you.
I also believe that the polling computer logs your IP address. The next time you try to vote in the poll, it recognizes the duplicate IP address and prevents you from voting.
The only confusion here is that it's able to report every IP address that has voted, even if they've voted multiple times, so I'm not sure if this is how they weed out duplicates or not.
Some people have a firewall program or a router or some other sort of security set up on their computers. What this does is prevents the computer from giving out it's "name" to anyone. If someone is scanning millions of IP addresses for instance, and it comes to one of these computers, it sends a "ping" or signal asking for the IP address and nothing comes back, so the computer is in esssence "invisible".
So perhaps if people with one of these set ups votes, they don't give out their computer's IP address, and so they are able to go back at a later time and vote again, since the poll computer doesn't recognize it as a duplicate.
Again, I'm not rock solid on exactly it works, but it's some combination of IP logging and cookies.
So, there are ways to game these polls, but with the abliity to see which IP addresses have voted and how many times, I can do what the poll computer can't, namely, figure out which computers have voted more than once.
And by compileing the IP addresses and sorting them, I can remove the duplicate votes and arrive at the actual number of valid votes.
I'll try to post updates on the actual vote count from time to time, though I don't expect too many muliple votes now that I've blocked several of the IP addresses which have already voted more than once.
Where did the poll go?
Nowhere. It's still in the sidebar where it's always been.
Can't you see it?
If it's not there, the only thing I can guess is that you're a multiple voter and your IP has been banned from the poll and rather than not allowing you to vote, it simply doesn't even send the poll to your computer.
Just a guess.
Dope, your explaination makes perfect sense, but I do have one question. When your internet connection is filtered through a wireless router, doesn't the router create a "fake" IP address, subnet mask and default gateway which is the same for any and all computers networked to that wireless router. Any networked computer (as I understand it) can then only be identified by a distinct configuration by users internal to the network, whereas viewers outside of the network (ie: the poll) will see all users on a certain network as being one single computer/IP address.
All wireless routers originating from the same manufacturer have the same IP configuration - an additional level of protection against personal identification based on computer's IP specifications. So is it at all possible that duplicate votes could in fact reflect different individuals using wireless routers from the same manufacturer? If so, blocking the IP would then block all of those varied users from further viewing of the poll, right?
I can't see the poll anymore either.
I admittedly tried to vote more than once yesterday, but the poll never accepted any votes other than the first. My computer is networked through a router, so I should be "invisable" as you say. And based on your explaination above, it doesn't sound like I would have been blacklisted, so is there another reason that I can't the running poll? I pledge to never again attempt to cast multiple votes!!
Yikes! Though Your explanation was understandable, the only problem is that though I'm familiar with how routers work in general, I have no experience with them and have never read or heard an explanation of how they handle IP addresses before yours.
I know I'm getting many votes from computers on various networks or ISPs as I've gotten them which are identical other than the last block of numbers, such as, 12.345.67.8 and 12,345,67.9 or at least somewhat close, indicating that they're from the same chunk of IP addresses on the same ISP or network, though this doesn't prove what you suggest isn't true.
Frankly, I have no idea, or if indeed blocking one address would result in blocking several computers which were connected through the same router.
And beyond that, if what you say is really the case, no good solution comes to mind at the moment.
Are you experiencing this problem yourself? Are people connected through the same router all blocked from the poll?
The IP blocking area of the poll allows you to block either a specific IP address (you enter the complete address) or a block of addresses (you enter the first three sections of the number and then enter a zero after the last dot)
I've not banned any blocks of addresses, only specific complete IP addresses which have voted more than once.
In that respect, I'd hope that it wouldn't prevent other "innocent" addresses from voting. I'm sorry if the sins of one user are being visited on others if this is indeed the case.
If you'd like to discuss this further, send me an e-mail and perhaps we can arrive at a solution, though right now I don't know what it might be.
If I find the time, I'll see if I can locate any tech explanations about routers that might confirm your suspicions, though again, I don't know what the remedy might be.
In order to unblock an address and allow others to vote, I'd have to know which specific address was the one causing problems. If I unblocked them all, it would likely cause more multiple votes to find, sort out, and account for.
Obviously, I'm trying to keep these to a minimum.
I'm no tech expert myself, but I do work off of a router regularly and have some troubleshooting experience with it.
The router itself establishes an IP configuration and then all computers networked through the router are given a different extention to the base IP address - 3 digits in the case of my manufacturer's router, but I imagine that's variable. Thus the IP address seen by you or the poll would be in the format xxx.xxx.x.100, .101, .102; or .0, .1, .2 etc. The first computer attached to a router is designated the first available IP address, or .100 in the example above. This is the default designation and would not change unless the router user has the know-how to access the router site and manually change their IP address designation for a specific computer (which most people have no need to do anyway). So, I would surmise that any voters who happen to be networked by a router manufactured by the same company and who are the first or sole connection to the router will have an identical IP configuration as visable to you and the poll.
This suggests that it might be possible that "duplicate" votes are in fact not duplicates at all, but represent different individuals w/ the same "fake" IP address as presented by the router. I attempted to cast my vote more than once on the first day the poll was posted to test its restrictions, but was unsuccessful, leading me to believe that protective measures were instated to prevent unlimited voting. I currently don't have access to viewing the poll - the same problem that the first poster is having.
If this is at least a partial explanation to the situation, I certainly see that there's no "easy fix" to the problem. Just keep those of us who are banned in the know in regards to daily tallies! Thanks!
Thanks for you very helpful and informative post! That information helps me better understand how routers work.
It's also a puzzle as to why you'd be banned if it didn't allow you to vote twice.
The way I assume things worked is that the poll service only reports IP addresses for computers which have successfully registered a vote.
I've only blocked the IP addresses which have appeared two or more times, thus I assumed they'd sucessfully voted two or more times.
But you're saying that you're unable to see the poll even though you voted once successfully and then tried again but was prevented from doing so?
This is perplexing to me. I don't think that the poll would report an IP address which had merely attempted to vote again and had was prevented from doing so by the poll itself, as the number of IP addresses reported to me, including the multiple voters, squares with the vote tally reported by the poll.
In other words, I wouldn't have cause to block your IP unless you had registered at least two votes from it.
This makes me wonder why you're not able to see the poll.
At any rate, that's helpful infomation and I've learned something about routers and how they work.
Thanks.
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