I’m told that the T in RIT stands for technology, which is quite apparent if you look at this year’s fan balloting site for the Hobey Baker award.
Those enterprising RIT fans were able to figure out an automated way to stuff the ballot box at http://www.hobeybaker.com/voting. As of this morning, RIT’s Simon Lambert has 262,000-plus votes compared to say the 3,994 vote that current favorite Kevin Porter from Michigan has received.
And RIT isn’t the only technologically-saavy fan base. Miami’s Ryan Jones has received a solid 203,500 votes and counting as of this morning.
I’m told by those in the know (of computers and technology, that is) that the Hobey Baker voiting site is so basic that writing a computer script to stuff the box likely took about five minutes.
Thankfully this fan ballot aacount for only 1% of the overall vote (or as the site says, “the fans’ vote accounts for a full 1% of the total ballot in each phase in selecting this year’s award recipient.
Let’s just hope that the 99% of the balloting that is comprised of human voting isn’t replaced by cyborgs in the near future.
UPDATE: As of 3:00 PM ET on Tuesday, the Vote for Hobey site now requires the voter to type in one of those words that is hidden behind the squigly lines as a ‘security measure.’ There’s no mention anywhere on the site that it was hi-jacked, though, or the fact that Jones and Lambert got a 200,000+ vote lead over the rest of the field thanks to the tech-saavy fans at each school.
UPDATE #2: As of 10:00 AM ET on Wednesday, vote totals appear to be reset with the new ‘security’ system in place. North Dakota’s Jean-Philippe Lamoureaux and RIT’s Simon Lambert have jumped out to quick leads, which makes me think that possibly only French-Canadians have figured out how to crack this new system. :)
