Tuesday, May 22, 2007

First Local Councils, Then Reality TV... Now Monopoly

There was a time when vote rigging was confined to stuffing ballot papers in local council elections. Then, in the age of premium rate phone lines, we started to hear stories of viewer voting scandals on reality TV and entertainment programmes.

But now election fraud has reached parts that it never reached before. According to Brighton's local newspaper The Argus, a Sussex town's bid to win a spot in the "Here and Now" UK edition of the world-famous Monopoly board has been hit by a vote-rigging scandal. According to the paper, game manufacturer Parker has named and shamed Burgess Hill as one of several towns whose position had been boosted by "irregular voting". Website managers have discovered people setting up multiple email accounts to cast extra votes on a daily basis. Following investigation of a number of "suspect" votes, the game company is expected to make an adjustment to the totals for the towns concerned.