Voters Chosen for the 2008 Harris Interactive Poll  (posted 9/18/08)

You can find the complete list here:  Panelist Recruitment for the 2008 Harris Interactive College Football Poll Finalized.  Pollspeak will be reviewing the list and will report anything interesting we find.

PEOPLE'S PICK: Bad Voter of Week 4 -- Tom Keegan   (posted 9/18/08)

This is a first for Pollspeak because it is a first for the AP Poll (since we've been tracking it).  For the first time a ballot has gone missing -- Tom Keegan's.  Neither the AP nor Tom Keegan have responded to questions about what happened, and normally they are both very responsive.  We will update you when more information becomes available.

Since this is the first time there has been a missing ballot, Pollstalker does what it normally does.  It displays Keegan's ballot, which is blank, but it also lists all of the "extreme unranked teams."  We received some reader feedback from people who thought those teams were his ballot.  We also received some feedback that said Keegan should be voted worse for not turning in a ballot.  Unfortunately we don't know the circumstances behind the missing ballot, and we don't know how many people voted for Keegan erroneously.  We will update Pollstalker in the future to handle missing ballots better.  Until we know more about Keegan's circumstances, we'll list both Keegan and runner up, Jon Wilner.

To reiterate, the "People's Pick" is only the opinion of visitors of our site.  Pollspeak will start giving official awards next week.

We can assume that runner-up, Wilner's 75 good votes came from fans of East Carolina or Alabama, whom he alone ranked #3 and #4 respectively.  However the bad votes could have come from fans of any of the three teams he alone ranked lowest on his week 4 ballot:  Oklahoma (#7), LSU (#14), and Texas (#22). 

As for Keegan, aside from why his ballot is missing, what confuses us most is -- who are the 12 people who thought he was the Good Voter of the Week?

9/19 Update:  Tom Keegan responds, "My missing ballot was 100 percent my fault and the AP went above and beyond normal means to attempt to get my ballot on time."  Keegan will continue to vote, and it sounds like there won't be any repeat performances of this week. 

Although we can't be sure exactly how many people were confused by Keegan's missing ballot, we'll assume his winning the un-popular vote was no fluke and remove Jon Wilner. 

PEOPLE'S PICK: Good Voter of Week 4 -- Tom Hart   (posted 9/18/08)

Tom Hart's week 4 ballot received the most net good votes this week.  This is the first time we've ever mentioned Hart, who is a play-by-play announcer for CBS.  However, there is no interesting story here.  He obviously pleased fans of both West Virginia and BYU by ranking them highest alone while not making any lowest rankings alone. Welcome to Pollspeak, Mr. Hart. May all your picks be good ones.