And the winner is…

Our friend Hugh Hewitt publicized the adage If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat. Like “the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible,” in the lyrics Ira Gershwin gave to Sportin’ Life, “it ain’t necessarily so.” If it’s not close, they can still cheat.

Consider the video contest sponsored by far-left MoveOn and MAYDAY.US. Announcing the contest, MoveOn urged applicants to “make a 30-second ad to wake up America to the crisis of big money in our politics.” The public was invited to vote on the contest entries. The conservative group American Commitment took MoveOn at its word. They entered the video below about the monumental hypocrite and billionaire Tom Steyer. I picked up the story here and John followed up yesterday here.

The video was winning as yesterday’s contest deadline approached, and it wasn’t close. What to do? The contest sponsors extended the deadline and sent out a blast email trying to alter the result. The new deadline is minutes away this afternoon. I asked a spokesman for American Commitment for an update. He has responded (“Phil” refers to American Commitment’s Phil Kerpen, who entered the video in the contest):

American Commitment’s votes have doubled since MoveOn sent out their blast email last night encouraging members to vote in the contest.

Voting will now end at 5:00 p.m. ET today (per the new rules)—but we’re still leadingly by large margins (maybe even larger margins quite frankly).

Here were the votes as of yesterday at 5:00 p.m. ET (the original end of the contest)…

TOP VOTE GETTERS AT 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 16

3,421—phil
197—david
158—nancy
120—charles.goldman
109—njlyell
69—williamrice63
59—democracymatt
47—williamrice63
46—js232003
38—mark
###

And for some fun perspective…

-American Commitment received more than 17 times the votes than the contest runner-up (3,421 vs. 197)

-American Commitment received more than 4 times the votes received by the rest of the Top 10 combined (3,421 vs. 843)

Now what? Stay tuned.

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