I wanted to update everyone on the Dave Friend Internet Scandal.
It appears there is a new poll at the Dave Friend website. Everyone go to the website and vote (if they let you). Please, vote only once. Friend’s people may call this skewing the vote but I call this “getting out the vote”. GOTV BABY! I want this to be the most organized internet GOTV in Nebraska’s history.
On a different note, one of our members emailed the Friend campaign alerting them to the “poll problem”. That person received this email back from a staff member (or volunteer) on the Dave Friend campaign.
From: Bill Bollinger [webmaster@friendformayor.com]
To: Daniel [xxxxxxxxxxx@hotmail.com]
Subject: Re: Hello
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:06:12 -0800 (PST)Daniel,
Your IP address has been recorded. It’s also been posted as a “hack me” challenge on Usenet. Have fun with all the visitors ditwad.
I take great pride in being a geek and I don’t understand any of that email (except the part about “your IP address has been recorded”). It doesn’t take a geek to understand the term “ditwad”.
If Dave Friend is elected mayor and a resident of Omaha has a complaint about a pothole, will Dave Friend’s staff respond and say “leave us alone ditwad”? That doesn’t seem very “friendly”. What kind of clowns are working at Dave Friend’s campaign? First, the poll results on there website were wrong. The problem could’ve been an honest mistake, but the Friend campaign decides to post a disclaimer on there website that contains blatant lies. They didn’t bother to fix the problem. Finally, after one of our members alerts them to this problem, they decide to email the person back and call them a “ditwad”. If Friend’s staff is anything like him, then I would be scared to see what happens to the city if he gets elected.
Finally, I call on Dave Friend’s campaign to officially reprimand Bill Bollinger. If this person is not reprimanded, then Dave Friend is saying that calling Omaha voters “ditwads” is acceptable.
UPDATE:
Holy S***
Do you remember when I said I couldn’t understand the email above? I finally figured out what Bill meant by “‘hack me” challenge on Usenet”. Keep in mind this is my personal interpretation of the e-mail.
What Bill was saying is he’s going to post Daniel’s IP address (which is a fancy way to say a unique number assigned to Daniel’s computer) on a “bulletin board” system where hackers hang out. I assume Bill would post this on the “bulletin board” in hopes that someone would hack into Daniel’s computer and do harm.
For people that aren’t geeks like me, let me give you an analogy. This is nearly equivalient to a Dave Friend campaign staffer emailing a bunch of friends and giving them Daniel’s physical house address. The staffer would instruct all the people on this email list to try and break into Daniel’s house. When Bill says, “have fun with all the visitors ditwad”, he is also saying “have fun with all the people that try and break into your house ditwad”. The person that successfully breaks into the house has full discretion on what to do next. That person can just open the door and leave, steal things, or burn down the house. Instead of this happening to Daniel’s house, it instead happens to his computer. Bill has put out a “hit” on Daniel’s computer. Essentially, Bill is encouraging an illegal activity.
I take back my earlier statement. I don’t want this person reprimanded. I WANT THIS PERSON FIRED! If this person is a volunteer, he should never be allowed to work on the campaign again.
We will see who the ditwards are come April 5.
lol! I think we should start a calling campaign to Dave Friend’s office until Daniel gets a formal apology.
Oh and chief, your interpretation is exactly right. I can’t find a definition of ditwad though…
Chief asked me to post this here, also:
In an attempt to look less slimy, he has taken the percentages off of the bar graph of results. The sliver of blue in the ‘no’ and ‘don’t care’ boxes is markedly larger than last week’s attempt at licentiousness. But still the ‘yes’s have it in an overwhelming majority. This guy needs a life and a job at APAC. Not the mayorship.
Mini-update: I got a letter into the public pulse making a pun out of one of Friend’s links (In Action = Inaction). Well anyway, while I was on the phone with the pulse girl, I told her about us being blacklisted and asked her to tell one of the reporters. I am hoping that someone will get back to me soon! Cross your fingers!!!
Mr. Friend is treating this like a scared child. The only way he can make himself look good is to lie, and then when he’s caught call people names. This is the most irresponsible handling of a campaign that I’ve seen (and keep in mind I was watching the Bush team very closely). He’s lied on several occasions. We should all try to get this info out as much as possible. Start posting on other blogs and hopefully it’ll reach the media. I think that it’s also time for a editorial campaign to the World Herald. It also says something that some of the best reporting on this issue has been done on our website. Good job all, keep up the fight.
ooooohmygod. Does Mr. Friend really think that he even has a chance at the mayorship?? NOOOO WAY. Ya know, it’s people like him that create feelings of hate and disgust towards politics. Who here thinks we should have a HONEST mayor? and who here thinks that the honest candidate is Mike Fahey? Someone needs to email Friend and tell him that he’s gonna get blown out fo the water in this election…maybe then he’d withdraw and save himself all the embarassment.
Wow! Friend webmaster email was really angry. Sure hope none of UNO Democrat members, supporters or folks who visited Friend’s website from a link in this blog had sent vulgar, threatening or virus-infected emails to the Friend campaign…would seriously undermine chief’s position. I’m sure UNO Democrats hold themselves to a much higher standard.
I read this blog entry and it got my ire up, so I made a call. I spoke with Chris Donnelly who is the Campaign Manager for Mike Friend. He told me there is a bug in the poll script. It was designed to only allow one vote per IP address. In reality it is only allowing one vote per network range. In other words, if one person on campus records a vote on the poll, no one else on campus will be able to vote. Chris said he was going to take the polls down until this problem is resolved. I also asked him about Bill Bollinger. He said Bill is a volunteer webmaster and is going to be reprimanded. Chis should be in contact with you soon.
Kenton
Wrong again.
The votes weren’t done from campus, as only 4 of our 40 members live in dorms. They were made from Chicago (by my sister) from Dundee, from Millard, from Lincoln, from Council Bluffs.
There is simply no “bug.” Even if it was only recording votes from one area the results (99 to .5 to .5) would be impossible with only 60 votes.
I’m glad you made the call Kenton, they told me the same thing. They are misinforme or lying.
And “Spencer”- I have no idea what you are talking about. If any member of our group did something like that I would want to know who so that I could personally get mad at them. Though if they did, it would certainly not be as big news that a college kid played internet hanky-panky as the news that a staff member for a mayoral candidate broke the law while being vendictive against a college kid.
Want to contact someone about this?
Send an email to one of the following news outlets. Let them know that you have heard about the Dave Friend internet scandal and you want to know what kind of investigative reporting can be done to uncover what’s really going on. If you have already contacted the Friend campaign, make sure to tell whichever media outlet you contact and tell them what was said. Make sure you give them a phone number to call you for follow up interviews and a link to the blog as well.
Channel 3:
news@km3news.com
Channel 6:
sixonline@wowt.com
Channel 7:
http://www.theomahachannel.com/ketv7/177307/detail.html
world-herald newspaper:
news@owh.com.
public pulse:
pulse@owh.com
Hello everybody,
I am the ditwad.
You know, mother always said I was special.
My e-mail was just an attempt to inform them that they have a faulty poll. It wasn’t negative at all really, so i was preatty shocked when I recieved his reply.
-Daniel