Avs Talk - A Colorado Avalanche Blog

Fire up your voting scripts and get ready for thousands of people to "back the winner" as the NHL moves to "as many as you want style voting" with real-time results for the All-Star game.

The NHL has announced that from November 12 to Jan 2, fans will be able to vote early and vote often to determine the starting lineups for the NHL All-Star game. And all the while, you can watch the results in real-time as they roll in. And watching those numbers magically move around makes the process "transparent".

But when you show just the results, it's not too hard to cook the numbers. Anyone remember Diebold machines?

Something as simple as the logic below would take care of it:

if(vote not in approved_list) {
add one vote to submitted player
add 10 votes to random player in approved list
}

And there you go. You can even get more complex and evenly distribute extra votes among the people you want to be in the lineup, ensuring that what fans want doesn't matter.

I'm not suggesting that happens *cough*Scott Niedermayer in the lineup after playing only a dozen games last year*cough* but to say real-time results brings transparency is a tad disingenuous.

I will give it to them on the "engagement" issue though. It's going to be fun to watch the numbers as they roll in. I just hope my easily distracted intellect will be able to hey look, a blue car!