How Tea Party's "Operation Bristol" is Cheating The DWTS Voting System

[HipChick]

http://jezebel.com/5691445/how-palin-conservatives-are-cheating-the-dwts-voting-system

It's been alleged that the Tea Party's "Operation Bristol" is keeping the teen mom in the competition. However, the real conspiracy is that her conservative supporters have figured out a way to exploit ABC.com's email-voting feature, allowing infinite votes.

While Bristol Palin denies any Tea Party conspiracy theories, there's no denying that conservatives have been pushing for votes for Bristol, using blogs and Twitter to start a movement. But what isn't widely known is the evidence—via message board comments on some conservative sites—that this mobilization involves fixing this (albeit meaningless) election through a technical snafu on ABC's website, which allows Palin's supporters to cast an infinite number of email votes:

Here's a hint: They don't have to be VALID email addresses to register them with ABC.com, there is apparently no validation process. The just have to be formatted like a valid email address, and you must use a valid zip code and a birthdate that makes you old enough to vote. I'm voting like a democrat, all night long…
No, it doesn't have to be a valid email address – I had one of my anonymous ones [e-mail] that I used, and then just did the sign-up process all over again with [e-mail] and it worked.
Got my 80 votes in online…took 2 hours. I am beat
I only got 42 in, I have some catching up to do!
Lord have mercy, I voted for 3 hours online! I got 300 in.
It seems like it's working! Early predictions about the votes indicate that Bristol is the safest bet to stay in the competition this evening. Sure, it may seem like just a group of overzealous fans, but their larger message is not about an enthusiasm for teen activism or ballroom dancing, but rather, is a way to show the left that the Tea Party is a force to be reckoned with. One site wants to "make liberal heads explode" by urging Tea Partiers to vote for Palin, even saying that they "don't need to watch" DWTS as long as they vote.

You may not be a fan of the show or even Bristol but I firmly believe her continued success on the show demonstrates the power of the tea party. However, not all conservatives are moved toward supporting Bristol. One commenter thinks there are more important matters at hand:

I will not vote for that tacky bit of TV trash. She should be home taking care of the baby and trying to find a good husband.Another site somewhat acknowledges that repeat voting is an abhorrent quality exhibited by Democrats in "real" elections, which is all the more reason why Republicans should utilize this feature with DWTS:

he fact we've been all doing this for Bristol has been driving the Left NUTS…For conservatives, enjoy the fun of finally, at last, getting a taste of what it's like to be a Democrat. You can vote as much as you want. You can vote using all sorts of names. You can vote all day. You can't get paid to vote, because you aren't really a Democrat, silly, but you can get as close as you can possibly get without being in a union or taking part in ACORN.
While yet another site admits that Bristol's success on DWTS is the right's way to get back at the left for unfairly giving Tina Fey a Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. (Apparently, there are still some hard feelings over Fey's impersonation of Sarah Palin.)

So, yeah, at least part of Bristol Palin's success on Dancing With the Stars is political. But don't ever tell me that the other side doesn't do this too. And don't complain because our side is doing it back.
I, for one, am not complaining. As someone who will pretty much watch anything on television, I find this show boring and frankly not up to my standards, which is weird because my bar and brow are both set very low when it comes to pop culture. Actually, I enjoy a Sanjaya-esque shit show in instances like these, in which I'm not the least bit invested. What's more troubling to me is that the Tea Party is at least right in its assertion of how powerful it can be—its votes can help a person without merit win a race. Thankfully, our government doesn't have an email voting system that can easily be manipulated. However, that didn't seem to matter a few weeks ago during the midterm elections



Read more: http://jezebel.com/5691445/how-palin-conservatives-are-cheating-the-dwts-voting-system#ixzz15VkdrZY5

[Historic NY]

1. they been doing all the polls and voting up or down messages boards too.

[toddwv]

18. I've taken a few screen shots

Simple Google search by typing in vote for bristol. They aren't exactly hiding it.









Ooops, sorry. Pictures removed. They were huge. I'll put them back up after some resizing...

[Mad_Dem_X]

27. Whatever makes them feel powerful, I guess.

[Angry Dragon]

2. It just goes to show that teabaggers do not care about quality

just look at most of the politicians they put up for election

One from Florida wants to kill people
One thinks god will stop any climate change
and the list goes on

[global1]

3. I Just Got Off The Phone With My 86 y/o Mother And She & Her Coffee Klatch Is Pissed.......

I guess Bristol Palin made it to the finals tonight and my Mom's coffee klatch thought she should have been eliminated weeks ago. They don't think she is a good dancer by DWTS standards. They now believe that Bristol is only making it through every week because of her mother and her mother's supporters. They are claiming that its fixed or bogus and they don't like it. I guess a couple of her friends have said they are not going to watch the show any more because of this. My mother is still undecided whether or not she'll continue to watch - but she is leaning not to watch.

I don't know if the people that put on the DWTS show realize the backlash that they are getting because of the Palin's. They are losing their base audience because of them.

I thought the show would just die due to the fact that people would just get bored with the same ole - same ole - season after season.

But DWTS has shot themselves in the foot this time by making the show take on this political aura and they are causing their own demise.

An afterthought on edit: My Mom's friends that watch DWTS are all up there in age. They don't use or understand the internet and can't comprehend that the voting system can be rigged. They just suspect that something isn't right about the voting and that the fix is in. Either way - that portends bad for DWTS.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

5. Did Brandy make it? I don't watch the show. n/t

[ashleyforachange]

9. sadly...

Brandy did not make it hence the rigged voting. She did a perfect dance but in the end it went to Palin. I wish there was a rule that the judges could over rule an elimanation in situtations like this where people who did not dance well are sent home instead of the couple who got near perfect scores.

[Hepburn]

4. I am done watching....

...when a clod with two left feet, Bristol, can beat out an elegant, talented dancer like Brandi, I am more than done with that bullshit.

[mediaman007]

6. The contestants must be getting paid by the show.

Otherwise, I would guess that this pro-Palin voting would cause them to realize that winning is impossible. Some of them may even be Republicans, who are being screwed just to show the Liberals how powerful the Teabaggers are.



Its kind of funny, because Liberals don't really watch the show anyway: http://gawker.com/5063314/the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-shows-on-tv

[Bluenorthwest]

38. The contestants on DWTS are paid very large weekly fees

DeLay easily made more there than he did in a year on Congress. Penn Gillette said his fee was well over 100K per show. They are there working, not really competing. Everyone is paid a ton.

[Raine]

7. They can cheat all they want but it still doesn't

give a talentless person any talent. :silly:

[toddwv]

8. They don't care.

Not even a little bit. We're talking about a group of people whose political ideology (and philosophy of life) is comprised completely of jingoisms. They have demonstrated that the end justifies the means IN EVERY FACET OF LIFE and they know that their media will be more than happy to ignore the "how" and supply the dialogue that they crave to hear. Winning by ANY MEANS NECESSARY is still a win in their book.

DWTS just got teabagged and the comments I've read on this story, there are going to be ramifications from a disgruntled viewership. This could also carry over to dim Sarah Palin's star a bit and it should because it's her "people" who executed this fraud.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

11. Winning the's only thing that matters to them

The last elections proved that.

[Mad_Dem_X]

28. The only way they can win anything is to cheat.

We saw that with the 2000 and 2004 elections.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

10. Good. This will kill that stupid fucking show

Bristol = Sanjaya

[nadinbrzezinski]

12. Dancing with who?

They really think they are going to make my head explode? Got news for them... readying is more interesting than this stoopid show...

So sad though that they think they will make heads explode by freepig this... tells me more about them than the stoopid show.

[Contrary1]

13. You're wrong of course;

So sayeth Bristol regarding her "success":

"I'm untouched, raw, vulnerable. I relate to the audience".

Yeah, Bristol...that's it.

:rofl:

[Skittles]

14. she didn't fall far from the tree, did she?

:rofl:

[Hannah Bell]

15. she's an idiot who'd be in a trailer if not for her mother's undeserved fame.

and that's an insult to decent people who live in trailers.

[Mad_Dem_X]

29. "Untouched"...

:spray:

[EOTE]

48. Except for that one time... NT

[Contrary1]

16. I will take this opportunity to quote Sally Field on her acceptance of the Oscar:

"You like me, you really like me."

Except in Bristol's case it would be "You voted for me, you really voted for me...no matter how badly I sucked. Thanks, Mama Grizzly."

[hyphenate]

17. Didn't she just get eliminated?

I don't watch, but I was reading a news summary and I saw that she was cut, or something.



Reading the comments tells me she didn't get cut. Too bad.

You know she can't best Jennifer Grey. THAT would be an interesting competition.

I STILL won't watch it though!

[LynneSin]

19. Can't the DWTS track IP address in all of those emails and eliminate duplicates?

Personally I don't have 3 hours to sit around and vote on for someone who does reality tv

[HipChick]

20. The problem is the teabaggers do....

[Raine]

23. I don't have time either, I have a life

it's PATHETIC to have no higher goal than to get some moron into first place thru rigging. :silly:

[undeterred]

21. Yeah, but who gives a shit?

[GrpCaptMandrake]

22. Well, her mother is the "Mama Grizzly" . . .

. . . and we all know bears can be trained to do a variety of things that mimic human behaviour, i.e. ride a unicycle, "sip sasparilla in the moonlight," as Jimmy Buffett noted, have sex with an OxyMoron. Oh, wait. Scratch that last one. Well, don't "scratch" it, exactly. That would probably get the Mama Grizzly's cub all excited, and we definitely DON'T want that!

Any way you slice it, the rigging of DWTS is a sad sign of the onset of the Apocalypse . . . with dancing bears.

[BlueGirlRedState]

24. I am a liberal and I am a fan of DWTS

I boycotted last season because of Tom Delay. Now I'm done with it. Too bad, because the other contestants and the professionals work really hard. This is a slap in the face at them. ABC seemed to find a way to put Sarah on every week, too, in some sort of backstory. Hope they are happy they killed off their number one show. I'd love to see the professionals walk out in protest.

[Hepburn]

31. Amen...

...I am not watching...and screw the sponsors.

[nc4bo]

25. So that explains it.

I don't watch the show, unless you call catching bits and pieces of each episode on news channels and blogs as "watching".

There were a few dancers that really seemed to be awesome (Brandy also = awesome) Bristol couldn't hold a candle to them. I couldn't figure out how she managed to keep beating the obviously better competition each week.

Well now I know.

Too bad popularity via cheating over rides skill. Typical for these silly talent shows America seems so obsessed with.

[Mad_Dem_X]

26. Dems get paid to vote? When did this happen?

"You can't get paid to vote, because you aren't really a Democrat, silly, but you can get as close as you can possibly get without being in a union or taking part in ACORN." :wtf:

Although I do agree with the one poster who says that Bristol should be taking care of her kid instead of being on TV.

[lise]

43. LOL...

She's getting paid buckets of $$$ to be on this show. Probably has her kid's college education paid off ten times over by now.

You think that's NOT "taking care of her kid"?

Whatever. Never seen the show. Could care less about this whole thing. But Ms. Palin is definitely "taking care of her kid".

Now, if she takes the $$$and blows it on drugs and partying, then I'll agree you've got a point!

[hobbit709]

30. Mindless moronic cretin fodder for mindless morons. What I think of DWTS

[TwilightGardener]

36. I have not watched a single episode. Proud to say.

I think that MORE than makes up for my Brainless Crap lapse with "Wife Swap".

[Blasphemer]

32. I don't watch the show but I assume shows like DWTS and American Idol want this sort of thing to ..

happen. They allow unlimited phone voting and have no checks in the e-mail voting system (verifying e-mail addresses, IP addresses, etc) to help prevent "cheating" so I figure they don't mind the phony votes and welcome the controversy.

[AndrewP]

33. Too bad teabaggers didn't just limit themselves to dancing shows

I couldn't care less either way who wins....but I just was thinking how nice it would be if they spent all of their time on shows like this and left politics and Governing to the adults.

[MadHound]

34. Good grief, people get upset about the stupidest of things

How about putting this sort of energy and outrage into something meaningful, like the fight against homelessness, or the fight against the wars, or the fight for our civil liberties, or. . .

But that would actually require people to get up off their couch and do something, a proposition that is currently, apparently out of favor with a lot of American citizens.:eyes:

[Nye Bevan]

35. But.... if the daughter wins the reality TV show then the mother becomes President!

At least, that's what one would think given how seriously many DUers seem to be taking this issue....

[JohnnyBoots]

37. Maybe this will get peole thinking of how elections can be rigged and stolen via

electronic voting and redistricting....nah, they will just swith to another brain dead show.

[Freddie Stubbs]

39. Good

I would rather have them do this than spend their time on other endeavors, such as electing candidates who support their ideology.

[Johonny]

40. Can't Jamie Farr just gong her?

I won't watch until Gene Gene the Dancing Machine gets his shot.

[DefenseLawyer]

49. Save us, Jaye P. Morgan, you're our only hope! n/t

[cbdo2007]

41. I honestly can't think of a bigger waste of time - than voting 300 times for any one for any reason.

[walldude]

44. I can...

Watching that show to begin with... :rofl: :rofl:

[cbdo2007]

46. ha ha - good call.

[SoCalDem]

47. Amen.. It's just a tackier version of "Love Boat"

where quasi-celebs & washed up has-beens go to pick up a little cash after their careers meltdown..

I've never been that able to even determine which ones are the "stars"...most of the names are not even known to me:)

That show & the other singing one always reminded me of how people try to avert their eyes when they see an accident.. they still look, but wish they could stop themselves..:(

I must admit, I DO enjoy the ice skating version..there is a lot of actual skill involved in learning how to ice skate:)

[OhMyBad]

42. Impressive

I think this has gone far enough... definitely much farther than it should have. Even a website OperationBristol in the works.

[Aviation Pro]

45. Jesus, who gives a flying fuck....

....about this?

[JackRiddler]

50. What a waste of time -- let the tea partiers do this, who cares? Jesus H!!!

[sadbear]

51. Just wait until Willow is on American Idol