The NYT blog "The Caucus" seems a little miffed that Moveon.org helped stack the deck in an on-line poll to select a question for an MTV Q&A forum for Senator Obama:

But, TechPresident, which produces 10Questions, says MoveOn sent an e-mail to 60,000 members urging them to vote for Mr. Niederberger’s video question, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land?” Within a day, usage on the 10Questions site surged, and Mr. Niederberger’s entry won with about 5,300 votes. The second-place question about medicinal marijuana got only 2,600 votes.

This is news? That’s what happens with internet polls. Never begin to take them seriously. One of the funniest instances of “smart-mobbing” was a decade ago when Mustafa Ataturk, Turkey’s “George Washington”, was voted a “better singer than Elvis” in the top entertainer category of a series of top 100 lists. Ironically the poll was sponsored by the New York Times. Turns out the Greeks, who have a strong dislike for Turks, were stuffing the ballots in the entertainer category in response to the Turks ballot stuffing in the top leader category.

Meanwhile, 10Questions.com certainly wasn't bothered:

By today, TechPresident’s Micah Sifry reported: “Participation on 10Questions.com has surged, with the total number of voters topping 15,000 (that’s up about 9,000 from Friday), the total number of votes hitting 46,000 (up 19,000) and the total unique visits for the weekend at 17,000, more than 10 times Friday’s traffic.”

I just wonder what Moveon thought was so important about their question.

h/t Hugh Hewitt