The south end of the beach at Hua Hin, Thailand.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Hua Hin, Thailand.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Maldives on March 23rd.

Friday, June 8, 2012

An interesting finish to the contest...

Or is it finished? The rules say that the entry with the most votes at 5:00pm PST (8:00pm EST) moves on to the finals and has a one in nine chance of winning the $12,000 prize to Australia. However, when that time went by, the voting continued...and strangely, you can still vote this morning.

So, is someone sleeping at the switch? Did they forget to turn it off? Has it been extended? Should we continue voting? Do they have some computerized way of figuring out who was in the lead in each category when the time struck last night?

All kinds of questions, which I'm sure will get answered eventually, but right now it's kind of confusing.

But it's really confusing if you are entered in the "Kangaroo Island" category.

We are fine, or at least I think we are. We were over 3,000 votes ahead of our nearest competitor, so it's safe to say we won our category. But my cousin Brenda was in the Kangaroo Island category, and it was a race to the end. We still don't know if she won.

She was ahead by about 100 votes with an hour left in the contest. But the person coming up behind her was getting about a vote per minute somehow. With 15 minutes left in the contest, she was getting a vote every 30 seconds. I had the official U.S. time clock running on the computer and at the 5:00pm PST mark, I showed Brenda as being ahead by 1 (yes, one!) vote! It was a photo finish, and I don't know how they're going to figure it out.

And then there's the question of voting still taking place. To be on the safe side, we've come this far and it wouldn't make sense to stop now because what if something has changed that they haven't told anybody about? I know it doesn't make sense, but I think we should continue voting until we know for sure what's going on. Here's the two links...

http://aussieexperiences.com/contest/entry/red-centre-kevin-read/

http://aussieexperiences.com/contest/entry/kangaroo-island-brenda-read/

Thanks for your patience everyone. I know this has been dragging on for a while, and I don't think we'll enter a contest like this again. Not one with this long of a time frame anyhow. Hopefully it has all been worth it. They announce the final winner on June 13. Or do they...?

(Edit: I have heard from the contest organizers and they acknowledge that there has been a problem of some kind. They are working on it and now the above links are no longer operational.  They said that they will update as soon as they have something to say. Now, we wait.)

12 comments:

  1. I'm still voting until they tell me I can't.

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  2. It would actually be pretty easy to vote multiple times if you use a VPN and log in to the VPN repeatedly and then just refresh the voting page. Each log in to the VPN would create a new and unique IP address that is connecting to the voting page upon the page refresh and so the voting page would think it is a fresh visit who hadn't voted that day (and that would be technically correct too as each IP address is only voting once; whether that violates the "letter" of the rules as well as the spirit is another matter).

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  3. I voted this morning and it worked. Strange for sure.

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  4. I thought it was strange that it was continuing to take my votes, too. But I'll keep voting until they decide they've had enough! Two from me every day!

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  5. Oh for heaven's sake! What is going on?? Off to vote!

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  6. Voted for each of you today as well. Got to wonder how on the up-and-up this contest is if they can't get this part right.

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  7. I tried to vote again yesterday on my other computer, but even though I deleted the "cookies" from their site, it still showed that I had voted already. I did vote today, for both of you, and that seemed to be fine. I'll keep voting as long as they let me! Hope you here something from them soon.

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  8. Very confusing situation. Best to keep voting. Poor Brenda must be in a bit of a state. If this doesn't get sorted out soon you are likely to be in the air at the critical announcement time!

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  9. especially since it is already a day later in Australia...

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  10. not working now. Someone converted the time change wrong?

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  11. I've been having fits because we headed to DE Sunday for the summer and Monday my laptop stopped working(hard drive). Today my daughter sent me an early birthday gift - a new notebook. I just now got online and the first thing I did was to look up your blog to see what was happening. Fingers crossed for Brenda!

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