PORT ANGELES — Fraudulent posts, including one supposedly from a deceased woman, an allegation of voter fraud and a Google suspicion that Outside magazine’s website had been hacked, excited passions on the final day of Internet voting in the “Best Town Ever” contest.
The contest pitting Port Angeles against Chattanooga, Tenn., to be named the winning city nationwide ended at 8:59 p.m. Thursday.
Results of the voting are available on the Peninsula Daily News’ website, www.peninsuladailynews.com.
As of 5:45 p.m. Thursday, Port Angeles trailed Chattanooga at http://tinyurl.com/pdn-best, with 60,278 votes, or 48.09 percent, to Chattanooga’s 65,062 votes, or 51.91 percent.
On Thursday morning, Google marked Outside’s website listing with a notice: “This site may be hacked.”
The warning linked readers to a listing that explained Google displays the message “when we believe a hacker might have changed some of the existing pages on the site or added new spam pages. If you visit the site, you could be redirected to spam or malware.”
Outside editors did not return repeated calls from the PDN to clarify the website’s security status and the status of the contest Thursday.
Outside sponsored the 64-city tournament-style elimination contest that set the west champion, Port Angeles, against the east champion, Chattanooga, which previously won the nationwide contest in 2011.
Commenters on Outside’s website accused Port Angeles supporters of voter fraud after, at one point in the contest, about 8,000 votes for Port Angeles appeared overnight.
Port Angeles boosters worried the contest would end with tainted results.
“No one really knows what happened,” said Mark Ohman, website manager for Revitalize Port Angeles, one of the organizations leading the charge for votes in the contest.
Ohman said supporters inquired as to how it may have happened, wanting a clean race for the win.
“We wanted to know where it came from,” he said.
He said Outside editors reported that they investigated the surge in votes and found no apparent cheating or “voting bot,” a program designed to automatically re-vote repeatedly.
It was speculated that the votes appeared after several Seattle-area television stations aired reports on the contest, leading to Seattle-area viewers all voting at once.
After the barrage of votes showed up, Outside added a “gatekeeper” feature to the voting method, requiring voters to enter a number drawn from a slightly altered picture posted, which ensures that voters are human, rather than a voting “bot.”
“It was because of concern that was raised by the votes. It was done to allay concerns about it,” Ohman said.
Ohman said a second concern for Port Angeles supporters was a series of posted comments on the Outside website claiming to be from Port Angeles residents or former Port Angeles residents, many of which savaged the town’s reputation.
“[The people whose names were used] said it wasn’t them,” he said.
He said the fraudulent posts could hurt the reputations of those people.
The names used to denigrate Port Angeles included that of the late Diane Schostak, a tireless supporter of North Olympic Peninsula tourism who died of breast cancer in March.
The person or people also used the names of resident Catherine Harper and Alan Turner, owner of Port Book and News, both of whom denied having any connection with the postings.
“I was a bit disturbed about it,” Turner said.
However, Turner added, anyone who knew him would never believe that he had posted the negative things that appeared on the forum.
“Anyone who knows us knows it wasn’t us and isn’t a customer of this bookstore or any other bookstore in town,” he said.
Turner said a tech-savvy employee “took back” the name online, and another posted a disclaimer on the bookstore’s Facebook account.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
