The current Antarctic Trip Vote count is as follows; 722 - 579 - 387 - 324 - 289 out of 224 candidates registered. I am in second place.
If you've already voted, then please encourage your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors to vote for the person whom you think would be best for this unique job: traveling to Antarctica for the month of February 2010 and writing about it for the public on a blog. Here is my 300-word essay; hopefully, you will agree that I am a very well-qualified candidate for this job opportunity. Voting ends 30 September and there is one vote allowed per valid email address (registration required).
Originally, I was trying to prove that my blog could provide a greater reach than any other blog registered, but it appears that the cruise company doesn't care about that at all, since they do not discriminate between one person voting for himself multiple times versus one person with one vote from many different people. Thus, it appears that registering multiple email addresses solely for the purpose of voting is the way to go to win this contest. So if you wish to do this, then by all means, you have my blessing.
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You are incorrect in your presumption that Quark doesn't care about the authenticity of the voting. We put in a clause in the rules to cover that - it is the sentence that refers to attempts to contravene the rules. If we discover that a competitor has knowingly attempted to contravene the rules, then that competitor will be disqualified.
That said, our intention was for this competition to be fun and lighthearted, and we understood that many people have a personal and work email. So if your "Aunt Margaret" supported you be using both her emails, we will not assume that is an attempt at contravention.
We are monitoring the competition daily to ensure that the spirit is maintained.
Shame, shame grrlscientist - play fair! It's good to know that people are checking to make sure no one just makes up emails and floods them with votes from imaginary people - it's a tough job though.
You still have some time until the votes are counted - so it's a matter of getting folks you know to get others to go vote for you. Now how many other bloggers can you ask to help promote you?
580, with my own vote added.
Play it fair...
There are people are working hard for this. SHAME.
John
I can't see anything in the rules that prohibits setting up multiple accounts to vote from them, though. I agree it's unethical, but I can't see what makes it against the rules.
How about monitoring the emails asking why we can't register to vote? I've tried and failed, and haven't got any reply to my emails about it.
Anyone having problems with registration can send an email to bywa@quarkexpeditions.com. That's the help email. Don't know which one you were using Bob.
We have found that two problems are consistently occuring - human error - voters overlook the instructions to wait for a confirmation email.
Clearly, Bob, that wasn't your problem. So you must fall into the second category. We find that a small percentage (less than half of a percent) of confirmation emails are not being received due to aggressive firewalls, including those of the ISP. Some emails just don't reach the registrant.
So Bob, please email me at the help address above and I'll have you confirmed manually.
Thanks for participating.
Prisca Campbell
Marketing Manager
Quark Expeditions
Prisca, it's nothing to do with "aggressive firewalls", it's an error on the part of YOUR technical staff in not setting a valid return-path for the mail that you're sending out. A significant proportion of mail systems will refuse to accept email unless the return-path (if it's not null) contains an address with at least a resolvable domain name; this isn't being "aggressive", this is just basic common sense.
For those people who are trying and failing to register: I could provide a workaround, is there any interest?
Prisca - I used your enquiry@... address. I'll use your help address soon.
Andrew - I think you should sell the work-around, for a price of 100 votes for Grrl. :-)
Bob O'H: selling it would be pointless; for Quark to fix this is literally a one-line change in some configuration file somewhere. I pointed the problem out on their blog, though my comment didn't pass their moderation last I looked.
So try this: when you enter your email address on their form, add .rtoad.com onto the end (e.g. voter@example.com.rtoad.com). That'll relay the confirmation email via a machine of mine specially configured for the purpose. That might (no guarantees here, but I've used it myself ok) get it delivered successfully.
[Disclaimer: this service provided as-is, without warranty, subject to removal at any time; mail other than Quark's confirmation mail likely won't get delivered; no personal info will be published or sold; contact abuse at rtoad.com (or postmaster) if something breaks. I have no connection with Quark Expeditions other than being an annoyed voter in their contest. Please do not use this unless you've ALREADY tried to register normally and not received any confirmation mail.]