Legal Research

ABA Blawg Contest Rigged?

By Steven Matthews

Turns out Slaw didn’t do so bad in the ABA blog awards Tech category. After a recount, we’ve placed second!

Now for the fun part… Google cache (while it lasts) shows a significant number of votes were removed from the system from the time the contest closed and the final numbers being released. (Hat tip to Bob Ambrogi)

Before the recount:

• FutureLawyer, 1930 votes
• Technolawyer blog, 1545 votes (Corrected as noticed by Neil Squillante below)
• Mac Lawyer, 509 votes
• Ross Ipsa Loquitur, 348 votes
• Slaw, 317 votes
• Jim Calloway, 169 votes
• Real Lawyers Have Blogs, 132 votes
• Ernie the Attorney, 93 votes
• Dennis Kennedy, 81 votes
• Inter Alia, 64 votes

AND after the recount:

• Technolawyer blog, 1499 votes
• Slaw, 295 votes
• Mac Lawyer, 256 votes
• FutureLawyer, 241 votes
• Jim Calloway, 150 votes
• Real Lawyers Have Blogs, 105 votes
• Ross Ipsa Loquitur, 102 votes
• Ernie the Attorney, 93 votes
• Dennis Kennedy, 82 votes
• Inter Alia, 64 votes

Not to throw stones without blame here — we did have 22 votes removed (for which I’ll take full credit - I voted on my mother’s computer at Christmas, and once on IE, FF, Safari, etc.) — but… I KNEW there must be some shenanigans going on.

Top marks to ABA Journal staff for checking duplicate IP addresses. Well done, and crisis averted! … At least for the contest itself. :)

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on January 08, 2009 (boomark / email).