Well, not really. But this is Illinois and one must expect some voting irregularities.
In one of the most closely watched and hotly contested elections in recent memories, Danny's Pizza edged Mel's in the first annual BocaJump "Who Cuts the Best Slice of Pizza in Elgin" contest. And not since Bush v. Gore in the presidential election of 2000 has there been such controversy.
More than 3,000 votes were cast, about five times as many as we Bocaites expected. The final total was Danny's 1,389, Mel's, 1330, Nick's 238. Nottolini's Chicago Pizza Authority and White Cottage rounded out the field.
Danny's has won most popularity contests in Elgin over the past 25 years, sweeping the Elgin Courier News contest for many years and just edging out Mel's _ our pizza authority's personal choice _ by a handful of votes.
In truth, both pizzas are excellent and the vote should have been close.
Now to the controversy, if it is possible to have a controversy in a vote for best pizza. As fans of Mel's and Danny's rushed to vote before the polls closed at midnight Monday, the system became so overloaded that it crashed for 45 minutes. Although we were accused by two people of intentionally shutting down the voting to allow Danny's to win, that is not what happened. And why we would do that anyway is still a mystery. Here is the explanation from Steve Munson, our technology manager and the only living person who understands how all this works (Note from Steve; Bailey's opinion, not mine. I've led him to believe I know how it works. No one really knows),
“Unfortunately the Pizza poll was unavailable between 10 and 10:45pm Monday due to technical difficulties. It appears that too many votes were coming from the same IP addresses and the voting system took itself offline. We resolved the issue and voting continued until 12 am. The poll is configured to allow only one vote per day from the same computer but a couple of groups found a loophole to bypass the safeguard.“
What that means is that people were able to bypass the safeguard designed to keep people from voting multiple times in a day and so many people were voting from the same IP addresses that the central management system automatically shut down. We could not identify who was stuffing the ballot box or for whom, but several hundred votes were cast in the last few hours.
So we tip our cap to the ingenuity of the American computer users who hijacked our relatively benign poll and turned it into Chicago-style politics.We should note that no one is blaming either pizza parlor or any individual because we know that Mel's, Danny's and Nick's all promoted the poll on Facebook and other social media (as we hoped they would) so any of hundreds of people could have spent Monday night repetitively voting for their favorite.
No matter, it was all for fun anyway and all six of the places served a good slice. BocaJump visited Danny's Tuesday night and can report they were humbled and honored by the award. Take a few minutes and view the video and enjoy a slice at any of our contestants.
In one of the most closely watched and hotly contested elections in recent memories, Danny's Pizza edged Mel's in the first annual BocaJump "Who Cuts the Best Slice of Pizza in Elgin" contest. And not since Bush v. Gore in the presidential election of 2000 has there been such controversy.
More than 3,000 votes were cast, about five times as many as we Bocaites expected. The final total was Danny's 1,389, Mel's, 1330, Nick's 238. Nottolini's Chicago Pizza Authority and White Cottage rounded out the field.
Danny's has won most popularity contests in Elgin over the past 25 years, sweeping the Elgin Courier News contest for many years and just edging out Mel's _ our pizza authority's personal choice _ by a handful of votes.
In truth, both pizzas are excellent and the vote should have been close.
Now to the controversy, if it is possible to have a controversy in a vote for best pizza. As fans of Mel's and Danny's rushed to vote before the polls closed at midnight Monday, the system became so overloaded that it crashed for 45 minutes. Although we were accused by two people of intentionally shutting down the voting to allow Danny's to win, that is not what happened. And why we would do that anyway is still a mystery. Here is the explanation from Steve Munson, our technology manager and the only living person who understands how all this works (Note from Steve; Bailey's opinion, not mine. I've led him to believe I know how it works. No one really knows),
“Unfortunately the Pizza poll was unavailable between 10 and 10:45pm Monday due to technical difficulties. It appears that too many votes were coming from the same IP addresses and the voting system took itself offline. We resolved the issue and voting continued until 12 am. The poll is configured to allow only one vote per day from the same computer but a couple of groups found a loophole to bypass the safeguard.“
What that means is that people were able to bypass the safeguard designed to keep people from voting multiple times in a day and so many people were voting from the same IP addresses that the central management system automatically shut down. We could not identify who was stuffing the ballot box or for whom, but several hundred votes were cast in the last few hours.
So we tip our cap to the ingenuity of the American computer users who hijacked our relatively benign poll and turned it into Chicago-style politics.We should note that no one is blaming either pizza parlor or any individual because we know that Mel's, Danny's and Nick's all promoted the poll on Facebook and other social media (as we hoped they would) so any of hundreds of people could have spent Monday night repetitively voting for their favorite.
No matter, it was all for fun anyway and all six of the places served a good slice. BocaJump visited Danny's Tuesday night and can report they were humbled and honored by the award. Take a few minutes and view the video and enjoy a slice at any of our contestants.
