Best Lap Dancer

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I admit it: I love the various ways people try to entice other people to vote for them in whatever field they’d like to be recognized as No. 1 in our Biggest Little Best of Northern Nevada readers’ poll. A good friend of mine, Connie, recently announced she’d like to be recognized as best social networker: “I’m currently offering 2 free lap dances for those who submit my name. Can be redeemed anytime I’m plowed drunk. So there you have it, lucky ducks.”

I’ll reiterate: We have nothing against people campaigning. That’s kind of the point of this thing. Buying votes? Well, how do you think a senator gets elected? Heck, candidates can’t even get into the debates without a certain amount of scratch. What we are watching out for is cheating, like when someone sets up a computer in their business and tries to force employees and customers to vote. I don’t want to say all the means at our disposal to catch such spoilsports, but the technological world is not really an anonymous place. Geez, I wonder if there’s a way to determine a MAC address once the IP address is identified.

Connie’s not the only friend I see on Facebook and on other less technical media campaigning for the right to say they’ve been selected as Northern Nevada’s best. I’ll also note that many of the people who are campaigning are the people who’ve won in the past. Might be a take-home point there.

I did get a call from one of the big casinos last week, trying to determine exactly how far they could go without getting disqualified for cheating. I told them to send their favored categories to everyone on their mailing list, but that we’d only allow five submissions from any single address, and that all submitters had to fill in a minimum of 25 categories.

I’m a bit afraid to ask Ops how voting is going. I can tell you there are only three weeks left. I can’t tell you whether I’m going to vote for Connie for Best Social Networker. Maybe I’ll submit her for “Most Creative Best of Campaign.”