I guess I'm just a poor loser

I guess I'm a really poor loser because I just can't accept that she won!

OK so this all started last week when I was chosen as a finalist for a small contest. I wrote about it already on Gather so I won't bother you with those details again but the part I AM going to write about is the final results.

Yesterday I posted an update here on Gather and this is what it looked like then:

Total Votes:  247

Entry #1 -- 59.0% down to 56.3%

Entry #2 -- 17.0% up to 17.4%

Entry #3 -- 0.5% down to 0.4%

Entry #4 -- 3.3% down to 2.8%

Entry #5 -- 20.3% up to 23.1%

Well -- The contest is officially over and I ended up in 2nd place, despite all the votes you guys sent me. I appreciate everything you guys did for me and ended up landing a $25 gift certificate!

Here are the final votes:

Total Votes:  265

Entry #1 -- 56.3% down to 52.5%

Entry #2 -- 17.4% down to 16.6%

Entry #3 -- 0.4% stayed at 0.4%

Entry #4 -- 2.8% down to 2.6%

Entry #5 -- 23.1% up to 27.9%

Now we all know (because I've vented about it like a million freakin' times it seems) that the person who won 1st place got the majority of the votes (about 80%) within the very first hour of voting! That doesn't seem right at all, does it?

I actually emailed the sponsor after I saw the voting happening that way that said this:

"Is your quiz set up so the same person can vote more than once? I'm asking this because I checked in on the voting for about an hour and entry #1 received almost ALL the votes. I'm letting you know this because I want people to respect your contest and when one entry out of five receives 80% of the votes within a short period of time it's almost always because someone is able to vote more than once. I've seen contests unfold before where an entrant won because of a loop-hole or other unfair reasons and it always reflects negatively on the sponsor of the contest. I personally love entry #1 and can see why people would vote for it, but I can't see how one entry can get a sudden increase in votes like that from individual voters. Even if the entrant asked all their friends & family to vote for them, there's no way all those votes would come in at once. Anyway, thanks for selecting my entry as a finalist!"

I really felt like a heel for sending that email to them but I wanted EVERYONE to have a fair chance of winning. For some reason I thought they'd take it seriously and check things out, see that the voting looked funky and fix it. The thing is though, I never received any kind of communication from them after I hit that 'send' button.

The thing that DID happen though after I sent that email was the way you could vote. I checked back in on things a little while later and they switched to a different poll provider. This one didn't allow you to vote multiple times so either they actually read my email & did something about it or someone else tipped them off about it.

I was really happy that you could no longer vote multiple times, but the damage had already been done. I KNEW that even if I asked my own friends & family to vote for me or if the other entrants did the same thing, entry #1 would always be in 1st place. There was no way anyone could close in on that kind of early lead, you know?

So I watched that entry sit in the #1 spot for a week, slowly declining in numbers but never falling from 1st place. The fact that entry #1 never got any more votes after that initial 1-2 hours proved something pretty substantial to me.

I really felt it would prove something to the sponsors too and they'd remove all those multiple votes.

NOPE, that never happened.

I did get a response from them though, finally, AFTER the contest was done. This is what it said:

UGH, really? THAT'S what they're going to try to say to me when I KNOW it's total BS?

I guess this all boils down to the contest being over, me ending up in 2nd place and me being mad about it. $25 isn't gonna get me a darn thing from that place AND I know that person won because they cheated!

I hate cheaters, I really do.