This video explains it all:
One of the competitors, Bosun, in this competition, whose entrants are cats owned by Members of Parliament, received an unrealistic surge in votes from Australia! There were 30,000 votes over several hours which must have looked ridiculous and very suspicious.
Bosun’s owner Mrs Murray, MP for South East Cornwall withdrew her cat after I presume she was asked to explain how 30,000 votes had been received so rapidly. The organisers say there were “a lot of voting irregularities”.
The competition was organised by Battersea Dogs and Cats Home who called it the Purr Minister contest. I suppose that is meant to be a take on “Prime Minister”. I am not sure. The purpose was to promote awareness of unwanted and abandoned cats.
Well, it has gone wrong with what was an almost purrfect vote rigging fraud. Another MP also withdrew his tabby cat Jude. There is no explanation why so I’ll speculate and state that it is because he could not trust the outcome or to steer clear of the scandal!
Perhaps the whole thing was a set up to get the competition into the news! The competition ends this Thursday.
Note: My thanks to Sarah Hartwell for telling about this news story.
Eeek, scandals abound around the world. Just amazing what can get politicians into the frey- what’s next?
Publicity stunt 🙂
Yes, I tend to agree.
In other words they created the rigging on purpose to be cuaght out for the publicity?
Yes – it’s a parody of human politics, complete with scandals.
It seems politicians can’t do anything at all without cheating and lying!
Even a competition to help animals has to be tainted by them 🙁
That was my thought exactly. Whatever they touch turns to fraud 😉 Sorry.
Yes – it does seem that way doesn’t it. Unbelievable. I guess its not wrong to advertize for votes – maybe she just a did a good job publicising her cat for votes.