Washington quarter voting hijacked by computer mischief

OLYMPIA – An online poll asking Washingtonians to pick their favorite design for the state's quarter was suspended today, after the balloting was hijacked by robotic computer programs that pushed the tally past 1 million votes over the weekend.

Technicians were busy reworking the online poll's computer code with hopes of restoring the voting by Tuesday, said Mark Gerth, a spokesman for the state Arts Commission.

State officials overseeing the balloting originally decided not to limit the number of votes coming from individual computers so that family members sharing a single machine could each cast a vote, Gerth said.

But that philosophy was being abandoned after the weekend's voting, which showed some computers casting repeated votes for a quarter design faster than humanly possible.

"We hadn't counted on, I guess, the over-enthusiasm of people," Gerth said today.

Stefan Sharkansky, a computer software consultant and conservative blogger, noted the online poll's susceptibility to such automatic voting scripts during the weekend after some readers tipped him off.

"Clearly, the votes were going up by 20 a second, which is not a plausible number," Sharkansky said Monday.

The State Quarter Advisory Commission is shepherding the selection of a special quarter design.

The finalists are:

• A leaping salmon breaching the water in front of a conifer-trimmed Mount Rainier.

• A salmon, apples and Mount Rainier within an outline of the state.

The two designs featuring salmon also incorporate "The Evergreen State" as a motto.

The orca design was winning in the altered voting before officials pulled the plug, and technical workers were attempting to purge the clearly invalid votes from the totals before restarting the poll, Gerth said.