New Houston Business Journal Poll

[zero4o3]

Looks like we need more voters. The other side seems to be overtaking this pole in the wrong direction.

Something is strange. The first option is "allows guns" but when you vote, "banning guns" is the first result shows. Also, banning guns is way ahead now!

Chas.

I think the results are just in order from greatest to least

[b4aftr]

My money's on a rigged vote

[viking1000]

My take is,can a business afford to lose 28 or 30 % customer support ???

[TexasGal]

I voted and my money is on it being a rigged poll. Either that or the anti's are sending it round every lib site they can find. I don't believe those poll numbers (which are getting exponentially worse) are truly reflective of the population.

[Skiprr]

Absolutely, positively, rigged. Perhaps not by the Houston Business Journal, but they aren't tracking IP addresses (which might prevent the issue) and I can absolutely guarantee you someone has rigged a 'bot to vote at automatic, frequent intervals for the "ban" option.

Here's why: I woke up at about 3:00 a.m., checked the Forum, saw this Topic. Looked at the vote: 66% for retail banning. As an experiment, I decided to vote while in no-cookies "stealth" mode, close the browser, then try it once more. In that span of time, at 3:15 a.m., six other votes has been recorded between my first and second.

Let's try it again with counts and time stamps:

03:26:08 - 2994 Total Votes - 66% Ban - 29% Allow
03:27:55 - 3002 Total Votes - 66% Ban - 29% Allow
03:29:14 - 3014 Total Votes - 66% Ban - 29% Allow

So, at 3:30 a.m., I voted three times in three minutes, six seconds. In the same span of time, 17 "people" voted for the "ban" option. Yeah, right. If it hadn't been zero-dark-thirty, I wouldn't have noticed it.

I don't believe there is anything we can do about it; HBJ isn't going to care in the slightest or offer to publish any sort of disclaimer stating that their poll allowed automated, unsupervised voting from the same IP address. But that's what's happening, and the automated voting is all on the anti side. If I were clever enough to rig something myself, I might just try to counter with a 'bot doing the same thing for the "allow" side...unscrupulous, but so is what's happening now.

HBJ has a substantial online presence, a large social media following, and a lot of business subscribers. Then end result here is that all those subscribers and online followers are going to see a totally inaccurate, falsely padded result that is going to make public opinion look as if it's skewed way to the left of the issue...when it is not. This won't help us one bit.

Now up to 3043 votes...

[Smokey]

Maybe the antis have faster computers because they aren't spending their money on guns

[suthdj]

Read comments after the poll.

[VMI77]

Read comments after the poll.

Your point being, I assume, the irrationality and stupidity of 95% of the commenters?

[suthdj]

Read comments after the poll.

Your point being, I assume, the irrationality and stupidity of 95% of the commenters?

You guessed it.

[lildave40]

Here is this mornings count.

56%
40%
4%
1%
56%
Yes, I prefer to patronize businesses that ban guns

40%
Yes, I prefer to patronize businesses that allow guns

4%
No, I don't factor a company's stance on guns into my decision to patronize the business

1%
Not sure/other (please comment)

[puma guy]

Looks like we need more voters. The other side seems to be overtaking this pole in the wrong direction.

Something is strange. The first option is "allows guns" but when you vote, "banning guns" is the first result shows. Also, banning guns is way ahead now!

Chas.

voting apparatus must be run by the same folks that counted 115% voting of registered voters.

[cyphertext]

So, if we pass the site around and tell everyone on every gun forum to go vote, that's ok... but if the anti's do the same, it is rigged? You guys kill me!

These online polls are not scientific and hold no value, as they are too easily played and manipulated. The only point of this poll is to bring more views to the website hosting it.

[Charles L. Cotton]

Apparently you folks are correct and the results are displayed in order of the vote count. 49% allowed, 47% banned, 3% not a factor, 1% not sure as of 3:33pm.

I don't believe for a second that, of the general population, 1/2 supports and 1/2 opposes allowing guns. This tells me the people who would vote "not a factor" are not voting.

Chas.

[JerryK]

It looks like the MDA activists have run out of votes and now the general public has now begun showing up to vote. The results have balanced out with >9000 votes cast.

This will all be forgotten in a few months (except for the 'do gooders' that think they are more enlightened that the rest of us)

[Mahzik]

Just out of curiosity, I checked on the poll this morning. As of 9:45 a.m. 1/16/16 with 23,316 "votes" cast:

75% - Yes, I prefer to patronize businesses that allow guns
22% - Yes, I prefer to patronize businesses that ban guns
3% - No, I don't factor a company's stance on guns into my decision to patronize the business
0% - Not sure/other (please comment)

Again, a completely unscientific poll that can easily be manipulated one way or the other. At least now if a company leader that reads HBJ and finds the poll, they will get the message that many people strongly support our Second Amendment rights and will make spending decisions based upon their companies' policies.