23-Year Nurse Wins SNN Valentine, Becomes Third Clintonian to Earn Accolade
CLINTON, Miss., Feb. 14 – In a fiercely-contested election marred by voting irregularities, Lindsey Box prevailed by 10 votes over Bailey Hopper to become the third and final SNN Valentine.
Lindsey Box, a nurse from Clinton, gained 1593 votes, while Bailey, a nurse from Brandon earned 1583 votes. None of the other eight finalists received 100 votes. Amanda, a second-year law student at the University of Virginia from Santa Fe, was third with 94 votes.
Soon after the poll opened Sunday evening, Lindsey and Bailey moved ahead, with each candidate attracting around 25% of vote casts thanks to lobbying efforts from hometown supporters.
At BrandonBulldogs.net, a social networking site for alumni of Brandon High School, members began urging users to support Hopper, a 2001 graduate of the school.
Long-time SNN reader Shane posted a link to the poll early Monday morning and encouraged BrandonBulldogs.net to vote for Bailey.
Meanwhile, local weblog and New Orleans Saints fan site The Clinton Administration, touted Lindsey’s candidacy.
But the huge numbers of votes for Lindsey and Bailey cast suspicions early Tuesday that the FreePolls.com-administered poll was being manipulated. Utilizing a security flaw in the Java-based poll, voters were able to delete their internet browsing cookies, and cast repeated ballots. The practice was employed by supporters’ of each side.
As Lindsey pulled out to a significant lead in the early hours of Tuesday morning, BrandonBulldogs.net user and Atlanta-based magician Joe M. Turner urged people to use any means necessary to return Bailey to the lead.
“You can vote multiple times, quickly, by turning off your cookies. I just put in 100 votes for her in the last five minutes trying to get her caught up. Click, backspace, click, backspace...,” said Turner.
“Turn off your browser's cookies and have at it. Clearly the other camp discovered this and chose to put it into play in this contest, so I have no qualms about exploiting this knowledge now,” he added.
As the votes continued to mount and it was reported that one candidate was earning 20 votes a second, The Network was finally forced to take extra precautions.
Snyder modified the poll to reject votes from IP addresses that were among the last 10 IP addresses where votes had been cast.
At this point, Box had a four-vote lead with over 3000 votes cast. Around three hours remained until the polls closed at 12:00 a.m. CST. And tensions were flaring among supporters of the leading candidates.
“Snyder, I’m going to beat your [expletive] if Lindsey Box doesn’t win,” said Buck, a nursing student from Natchez and contributor to TCA.
The lead exchanged hands several times late Tuesday morning until Box moved ahead for good.
The election outcome might have been contested, but with moot court briefs due the next day and Feb Club on the calendar, the UVA students providing the bulk of support for 3rd place Amanda’s candidacy had more pressing needs than questioning the propriety of a poll from an obscure weblog.
“You could say they were handcuffed from taking action,” said Snyder, alluding to the Handcuffs and High Life Feb Club party that many UVA law students were expected to attend Tuesday evening on Lewis Mountain Road.
With the victory, Box becomes the third Clinton resident to hold the prestigious honor. Caroline Lenoir, a sophomore at Mississippi College, was last year’s winner and Diane Swalm, a certified account, took the title in 2005.
I’m elated that people care so much about an essentially meaningless award from an essentially meaningless website,” Snyder said. “This is a sign of the power of true friendship, the bonds of community, and the innately competitive nature of the human spirit.”
Lindsey could not be reached for comment.
Snyder says he’ll present her with a victory prize when he returns to his native Mississippi in early March.
“I’d initially considered offering her a prize that is aged 25 years, weighs 205 lbs. or so, needs seven to nine hours of recharging in the evening, and produces endless streams of soul-inspiring conversation, high school football stories, irrelevant Saved by the Bell trivia, and sarcasm” he said.
“But she’s never seemed impressed when she’s seen that in the past, so maybe we’ll just get her a gift certificate to Starbucks.”
WillBardwell.com publisher Will Bardwell contributed to this report.