Vote Now, Vote Daily, Vote from Anywhere - Photo Finish in the Nature's Bounty Charity Contest!

View the Post on the Blog

by Sasha

Real mud flying while we're neck and neck! Photo by Paolo Camera on flickr.


Quick! You have 27 seconds to win $5,000 for an ME/FM charity!

So please – don’t think! – do this now and then come back and read about why you did it:

• Go to the Share the Bounty charity voting page.

• Click on ‘N’ to get the list of charities beginning with ‘N’.

• The second one down is the National ME/FM Action Network. Click on the ‘Vote’ button.

• Enter your email address in the box that pops up, do the Captcha thing to prove you’re not a robot, tick the box accepting the terms and conditions and hit the ‘Vote’ button.

Done! OK, maybe that 27 seconds comes with practice but it’s daily voting, so please keep coming back until the contest ends on 29th March.

So, why did you do that? Because the Action Network, which is Canada’s main ME/FM charity, is in a close fight for third place in the contest. Third place wins $5,000: no prizes for fourth.

Over the past few days we’ve been in third place, been in fourth, been back in third and so on as we’ve fought a close battle with a charity that looks after birds. Yes, birds. Nothing wrong with animal charities but surely we are every bit as appealing so let’s fight for that cash!

The Action Network is well worth supporting. They led the development of the Canadian Consensus Criteria for diagnosis, from which we’ve all benefited, they promote research and they support 750,000 patients in Canada through advocacy, education and information.

Thanks to an all-out effort across the community – particularly the ME/CFS Fundraising Group on Facebook, which includes members of Phoenix Rising – we’re getting about 1,100 votes a day and we need to keep pulling in more voters.

You can sign up to a free, daily reminder to vote here. It’s a Google Group so if you have a gmail address then you can go straight in and sign up. If you don’t have a gmail address you can get the reminder sent to your existing email address (Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc.), but to set that up you will first need to open a Google account by signing up quick and painlessly here. Then go to the Google Group and join it.

So, as we enter the final days of the contest, please vote, tell your friends to vote and keep voting daily!

Phoenix Rising costs money to run and needs your donations to keep it going. Without you we can’t continue to serve you and the community. Please donate!

​

View the Post on the Blog

 

We are now 1040 votes behind 3rd place. Reach for the Rainbow is getting over 2000 more vote/day than we are. If more of their people start voting for us, they could wipe that lead out quickly.

 

Final straight - voting ends on Friday!

• REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO49752
• Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society46603
• MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY23006
• NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK22047
• SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY11312

 

We got more votes than the birds did in the last approximately 24 hours! The gap is closing.


ETA: We had a noticable increase in the number of votes, so Reach for the Rainbow must be voting for us. It might be good if someone on Facebook would note this on their FB page and thank them (and ask more of them to vote).

 

and please vote for Australian health
election year
ABC election concerns
http://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2013/votecompass/
survey
my points are
Lyme disease
Medical Malpractise
greed in Australia
Both parties are incompetent

Government lives in 1902

Vote Compass
www.abc.net.au
ABC News is launching an interactive online application to help voters engage on important policy issues during the coming federal election campaign.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/waperthlyme/permalink/481802138541830/

 

and please vote for Australian health
election year

Hi GA - you might want to start a new thread on that - I suspect that by this time, it's a relatively small number of hardcore Nature's Bounty voters on this thread, mostly bumping it to keep it visible on the forums to remind people to vote. I don't think many people will see your request here.

 

Just voted...

We're about 840 behind - this time yesterday it was 960 behind. A slight closing of the gap - don't know if both we and the birds are picking up speed - I haven't been monitoring the daily vote increase.

• REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO53597
• Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society50446
• MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY24376
• NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK23547
• SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY11849

 

I just voted!

 

Now we are 980 votes behind the birds.

 

I have been monitoring the daily vote changes for the past few days. We and the birds got about the same number of votes in the last 24 hours, down for both of us, so we are about the same number of votes apart. Voting for Reach for the Rainbow was down even more.

 

Just voted, and we're still 860 down but it ain't over til it's over and only two more days to go:

• REACH FOR THE RAINBOW ONTARIO56740
• Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society53517
• MOUNTAINAIRE AVIAN RESCUE SOCIETY25677
• NATIONAL ME/FM ACTION NETWORK24811
• SENIOR ANIMALS IN NEED TODAY SOCIETY12381

 

I have been monitoring the daily vote changes for the past few days. We and the birds got about the same number of votes in the last 24 hours, down for both of us, so we are about the same number of votes apart. Voting for Reach for the Rainbow was down even more.

Throughout the contest, I have suspected that would be the case re: the background level of voting. It's very strange. Whenever we've boosted our vote and overtaken them, increasing our daily vote, there has been a response within 24 hours which looks almost as if they've conjured 100, 200 or in this case 1000 one-off votes out of thin air. Then, the gap remains constant, and the daily voting levels remain about the same for both of us. It wouldn't surprise me if the final tally were adjusted significantly from what we see on the leaderboard right now.

 

i agree Mark, assuming the bounty are bothered about reviewing the votes and adjusting it. lets hope they do

 

Whenever we've boosted our vote and overtaken them, increasing our daily vote, there has been a response within 24 hours which looks almost as if they've conjured 100, 200 or in this case 1000 one-off votes out of thin air.

Which begs the question, why not conjure another load and bag the $20k first prize?

All very weird.

 

We got about 100 more votes that the birds yesterday. (We had an increase, they stayed the same.) That means that the gap closed by about 100 votes. They are still about 900 votes ahead of us.

 

we all need to remember that we also have almost 30,000 ballots into the random draw.
Some screenshots of people mentioning voting with multiple accounts were sent to the sponsor (one even mentioned voting 50 times and making new accounts as he did). Whether the sponsor chooses to address it or not is another matter.
In the end, whatever happens, we had integrity in this contest, and that is worth a lot too.

 

The site now says that the votes are being reviewed, rather than counted.

 

I emailed them to say Mountainaire votes looked suspicious. They have a link to email them. http://www.sharethebounty.ca/charities.php

 

The sponsor has been contacted and supplied with screenshots. I am not sure flooding them with mail is the wisest course at this point in time. helen41, what do you think ?

 

The sponsor has been contacted and supplied with screenshots. I am not sure flooding them with mail is the wisest course at this point in time. helen41, what do you think ?

Just to note, Nature's Bounty does log your IP address when visiting their site. Every time a voting ballot was filled out and submitted, the IP address attached to the email address would have been logged. So for all the people that were cheating using multiple email addresses, if they did this without using some kind of software that hides your IP, they will be caught and their votes should be disqualified.

I have a screen shot of the votes at 11:59 when the voting was supposed to be over and will be interested to compare it to their final official tally.

I think we really don't need to advise them of any cheating because they have been advised and their review will hopefully deal with the cheaters.

Kina.

 

I just wanted to add, I started a conversation with the people at Nature's Bounty regarding the issue of cheating at about week 3. I just received a reply from them that said:

Good Morning Kina,

During the review period we will be going to lengths to ensure the votes counted are fair. We will be compiling a list of submitted emails and disqualifying any repeaters or illegitimate emails. We appreciate your concern and will do everything possible to maintain fairness.

Thanks

That's a very positive response.