On March 5, I mentioned a poll on Senator Frist’s site, which was running 66% to 33% in favor of bombing Iraq (scroll down). Some other bloggers linked to the poll as well, and by the next day, the tally was 55% to 44% against the war. And the hits kept on coming:
“At 1:35 pm Washington DC time on March 6, the Frist site reported 31,118 responses to the war poll. Anti-war respondents (55%) had gained a clear majority over pro-war respondents (44.6%). (These figures do not quite add up to 100%, apparently because of the rounding method used by Senator Frist’s staff.)
“Within the hour, at 2:23 pm, the anti-war fever had risen, with 56.9% anti-war, 42.9% pro-war. By 4:29 pm, according a snapshot of the Frist site, with 37, 742 total responses, the anti-war vote registered 59.5%, with the pro-war vote ebbing at 39.8%.”
All of which inspired Frist to pull the poll from his website, claiming it had been “hacked.” Actually, it was a one-visitor-one-vote poll, so I’d say it had been subject to active, participatory democracy. But we all know how Republicans feel about that sort of thing. (Complete story here.)
Update: the plot thickens.