Looks like the Democrats and independent leftists of other 'non-labels' got word out to vote in the poll!

Watch the Candidates' Night on NACAM stations and on-line at http://www2.northandovercam.org/gov.php. Make up your own mind. Keep informed, ask questions of the candidates directly, and VOTE next Tuesday, March 27th.

What's the matter Bryan is your candidate not getting the attention you would like? Let's run another survey so you can report the results. Make sure you note not only is it not scientific, you can vote multiple times using different browsers, different computers, phones, etc. Even American Idol only lets you vote 12 times.

My hope is people realize the importance of the position of Moderator and get out and vote for the most qualified person. FRANK MACMILLAN JR.

Susan, I do not have a candidate in this race or any other race. Just because a poll is not showing what you want it to, doesn't mean there is a Patch conspiracy. When I posted the original set of polls a few weeks ago, I said I would be posting polls again in a few weeks, to compare the results. There will also be a poll of School Committee and Selectmen candidates this week. If you have a candidate or candidates you'd like to see win, perhaps you should be out campaigning for them instead of ranting about conspiracy theories with an online pseudonym.

Cool Fusion, no one is forcing you to participate. You choose to go out of your way to log in and comment. In doing so, you agree to certain rules. These rules are common on most online news forums. Unfortunately, you also tend to go out of your way to start fights with people. Going around the site leaving nasty comments while hiding behind a pseudonym is classic cyber-bullying. I won't apologize for reigning that kind of stuff in. This is a site for everyone, and everyone should feel comfortable participating.

Bryan - I don’t think there is a Patch conspiracy; I think you have showed a bias in much of your coverage of this election, and you have no idea whether my candidate is winning or not. But you did not address my concern not only should you remark that this is not a scientific survey you should also let people know that you can vote multiple times using different browsers and with different internet access devices. So unfortunately there is not much value in the information.

Cool Fusion – I have to agree with Bryan you tend to get nasty instead of simply outlining your opinion and many of your points get lost in the ramblings.

Susan, what makes you think I have a bias toward or against any candidate? I have no horse in this race, or any other local election race. Throughout the campaign, I've reached out to all candidates and all candidates have contacted me with various items. During the recent debate I made sure, and double checked, to include input from each candidate. And the candidates have gotten about equal coverage on the site.

Is your beef with the fact that I have not run pieces trashing whichever candidate you don't support, or pieces promoting the candidate you do support? Sorry, that is not how news is supposed to work.

Also, the poll already says it's not scientific. And as of right now, regarding two of the candidates, it's a dead heat so it would seem if one side's supporters are voting very often, then the other side's supporters are as well.

Susan,
I had similar concerns the first time the survey was run because not all candidates in my opinion were getting equal name recognition from the survey page. Bryan did make changes to address that issue.

Here's the thing... And I don't mean this to be rude or dismissive at all... But I honestly don't care who wins. I've always lived in cities without Town Meeting or a moderator. I didn't even think town moderator was a big gig until recent years covering local news. And from conversations with the candidates in North Andover, I personally think they're all nice guys and could do a decent job. But I'm not the slightest bit invested emotionally, mentally or ideologically in any of them.

When interesting factors arise in an election I cover them. DiSalvo's online survey about Town Meeting; ideas for hand-held voting devices; local GOP and Charlie Salisburry endorsing MacMillan (both huge for MacMillan because 1. political parties don't tend to do that, and 2. Salisbury is considered by many to be a model for what town moderator should be); Bahrawy then speaking out against what he saw as extreme partisanship in the race; DiSalvo responding to concerns of partisanship (which you will see later this morning), which warrants coverage because his opponents had just spent the past two days commenting on his party affiliation. The debates got coverage as well, because they allowed all the candidates to get their message out and confront issues on the same stage for the voters.

To imply that I am biased toward, or manipulating coverage for, any candidate is just plain wrong. And as a journalist, I find it a bit insulting.

Here's what I think. Note that what I think and the truth aren't necessarily correlated.

The Patch received some Letters to the Editor supporting Mark DiSalvo and published them. I think the Patch will publish any letter if its relevant to North Andover somehow (e.g. there are pets in NA so we'll accept a letter about pets), isn't too offensive, and respects most of the grammatical rules of the English language. The Patch probably hasn't received letters supporting other candidates until recently. They published these letters as well but you can't publish a letter until you receive it. I haven't heard anyone complaining about writing a letter and not having it published. As the Patch becomes more successful, I'm sure it will be less apt to publish a Letter to the Editor that doesn't add new information to the letter they published yesterday.

If I were the Patch, I'd be thrilled that so many people came to the site and voted in the poll.

Mike, that's exactly how the Letters to the Editors work. Although I haven't thrown out any... I just hold off a day or two so I can space them out since I just don't want the whole homepage to be "Letter to the Editor." When I have some letters on hold, I try to set them to go on the site in a way that evens out the topics (in this case, I might put a pro-DiSalvo letter up and a pro-MacMillan up and a letter on a different campaign topic up, on the same day). It doesn't always work out that way, and some days there will be multiple letters endorsing one candidate. At the start of the campaign there were nothing but letters supporting DiSalvo. Luckily as the campaign rolled on we got more diversity.

And yes, I am very thrilled so many people are engaging in the campaign coverage on Patch!

Bryan,
I appreciated the changes you made during the first survey; I thought they were responsive to my concerns. Unfortunately in your position you will come under a lot of scrutiny, I wouldn't take it so personally.

I do question why Patch even runs these surveys since you don’t even have to live in North Andover to vote, all you have to do is log on to Patch. They are less than scientific and can easily be manipulated so they really serve no purpose, not even a good indication of how the candidates are doing. Essentially all they do is stir up controversy.

To be quite honest, they boost my numbers (site traffic, page views and user engagement). Polls get people involved in election coverage. Look how many votes have been registered in this poll alone. Sure, it's not a scientific poll because anyone who logs on can vote.

But if there is over-voting, it seems to be happening on two sides, with DiSalvo and MacMillan in a dead heat... looking at the results thus far, I have a feeling they are more accurate than the poll a few weeks ago. I suspect this is because of a few factors. 1) As Mike pointed out, Letters to the Editor seem to show MacMillan's support base has arrived on Patch for election coverage and user engagement (which is great!). 2) MacMillan's campaign may have become much more organized since last month. 3) The race is in the final stretch so passion is amplified on both sides as opposed to just being a matter of organization.

At any rate, like I said, it gets my numbers up and fosters lots of user engagement and election coverage participattion. Win-win for all.

How many time is Mark DeSalvo going to vote for himself? I watch the count increase faster than the national debt. He has clicked that poll more times than North Andover has voters that will or have participated in any election.

These types of polls are fun, interesting, and serve virtually no purpose--other than what Mr. McGonigle so honestly stated: they boost numbers for the site. And what's wrong with that? It's nice to have this site out there for N Andover news. Plus in a few weeks it'll quiet down and we'll be back to "normal". But there's no nefarious plot afoot to steal the election for one canidate or another.

MARK DISALVO FOR THE WIN.