State Quarter Voting Hijacked...

As I suspected, the on-line voting for the Washington State Quarter was hijacked by idiots with bots, as reported by KOMO News:

An online poll asking Washingtonians to pick their favorite design for the state's quarter was suspended Monday, after the balloting was hijacked by robotic computer programs that pushed the tally past 1 million votes over the weekend.

Technicians were busy reworking the online poll's computer code with hopes of restoring the voting by Tuesday, said Mark Gerth, a spokesman for the state Arts Commission.

State officials overseeing the balloting originally decided not to limit the number of votes coming from individual computers so that family members sharing a single machine could each cast a vote, Gerth said.

But that philosophy was being abandoned after the weekend's voting, which showed some computers casting repeated votes for a quarter design faster than humanly possible.

I say allow a reasonable number of votes from the same IP, say five maximum, if you want to allow family members to vote. Otherwise, the only reasonable way is to ask for details or something each time someone casts a vote. Or use the "only human readable" graphics. Just as long as the ugly jumble design doesn't win, I'm happy.