How to rig your own poll

by Sapphire (April 17, 2008)

If you want to run a poll on a Wordpress blog and rig it, it’s very easy:

Download the Democracy plugin, which is secure now
Install it and set up your poll (plugin comes with instructions)
Log into your server control panel and choose phpMyAdmin.
Browse the “wp_democracyA” table.
There you should see the answers you’ve given. Note what the number you want to change currently is. Now pick the pencil icon to edit the answer you want to change.
Change that number. It’s in the fourth box down on the right hand side.
Click “Go” to save.
Repeat for other answers, if needed.

Possible moral issues. Deception is generally considered bad. And yet most of our supposed moral and political leaders engage in it 24/7, as do most human beings. I’ll leave you to work that one out!

Why would you want to do this? Maybe you’re getting an embarrassingly small number of votes and you just want to make it look like more people are participating, so that more people will participate. In which case you could just take all the answer numbers and multiply them by the same number so it stays proportionate. Or maybe you want to spark a controversy. Or maybe you’re a horrible person pulling a very mean trick. In any case, hopefully no one is making major life decisions from blog polls. I’m just pointing out a technological fact.