Ron Paul is my candidate of choice, so I figured I would check this site out when my brother emailed me. StrawPoll08 bills themselves as the "Epicenter of the 2008 Presidential Election". Damn proud of themselves I have to tell you. There are four different polls on the front page of the site; Condensed Monthly Poll, Straw08 Expanded Monthly Poll, Condensed Weekly Poll, and a Junk Poll. Each of the polls includes a mixture of the following 86 presidential candidates:
- Steve Adams
- Gene Amondson
- Michael Archangel
- Warren Ashe
- Chuck Baldwin
- Terry Barkdull
- Joe Biden
- John Bowles
- Sam Brownback
- Edward Buck
- Allen Bunch
- Jim Burns
- Gene Chapman
- Wes Clark
- Hillary Clinton
- Jim Clymer
- Jerome Corsi
- Hugh Cort III
- John Cox
- Randy Crow
- Orion Karl Daley
- Laura Davis-Aaron
- Chris Dodd
- John Edwards
- Cris Ericson
- Vinnie Ferrari
- Michael Forrester
- Dan Francis
- Jim Gilchrist
- Jim Gilmore
- Newt Gingrich
- Rudy Giuliani
- Mark B. Graham
- Mike Gravel
- Chuck Hagel
- Robert Haines
- Bob W. Hargis
- Curtis Hayward
- Dave Hollist
- Millie Howard
- Mike Huckabee
- Duncan Hunter
- Dan Imperato
- Bob Jackson
- Mike Jingozian
- Alfonzo Jones
- John Joseph Kennedy
- Alan Keyes
- Karl Krueger
- Steve Kubby
- Dennis Kucinich
- Pat Lamarche
- Alden Link
- Elvena E. Lloyd-Duffie
- John Mccain
- Frank McEnulty
- Cynthia McKinney
- Robert Milnes
- Sal Mohamed
- Ralph Nader
- Barack Obama
- Fred Ogin
- George Pataki
- George Phillies
- William "Doc" Raven
- Arthur J. Regan
- Bill Richardson
- Mitt Romney
- Wayne Allyn Root
- Rebecca Rotzler
- Marshall Sanders
- Ole Savor
- Joe Schriner
- Jonathan Sharkey
- Al Sharpton
- Christine Smith
- Michael Charles Smith
- Richard Michael Smith
- Doug Stanholpe
- Kat Swift
- Tom Tancredo
- Ben Thompson
- Fred Thompson
- P. Dale Thompson
- Tommy Thompson
- Lanakila Washington
- Rick Williams
Want to know who's not listed aside from myself (I have decided to run as emperor) RON PAUL, republican candidate. Actually he isn't really a Republican in the sense that he wants to tax everyone to death and control everything from his church pew but Libertarians don't get elected so he is a Republican now. Fucking Ole Savor is listed but not Ron Paul. What's up with that? I decided to find out.
Hmm...When my brother went earlier and when I went a couple of hours ago, there was a chat room on the main page and they were systematically deleting Ron Paul's name out of it. There are screenshots at his site. Whether you agree with me or not about Ron Paul it certainly is not cool to be censoring politics.
I saw a comment before the chat room disappeared where the moderator was accusing everyone of being "chickens" because they would post anonymously in chat but not in the Free Speech Forums. I DID check out the forums. One topic, one post. I did comment myself, but there doesn't seem to be a whole hell of a lot going on over there. The whole place looks pretty new even though it has been up for almost a year. There's no content to speak of other than the polls and that one message thread.
I went back to the thread a minute ago to see if anyone else had visited and my IP has been banned completely (see pic below). Damn. I was actually pretty polite and posted a message that wasn't rude and did not contain profanity. What exactly is it that the site owners have against Ron Paul. Is it the fact that he is an honest man that wants to cut through the bullshit?
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Thanks for the link. The funny thing is, I'm not a big fan of Ron Paul. I really like his view on some things, but totally disagree with his stance on the war, among other things (I'm an interventionist at heart).
Whatever. Point is, if you're going to have an open forum -- have it be open. What a weenie.
Yeah, I don't agree with him on the war either but I think that he would probably come around if elected. People tend to change once the real workd hits, but if he kept even 20% of his beliefs and ethics we would still be better off than we are now.
This is what I tried to post on Stawpoll08 and I am now also banned completely from the site:
"A certain candidate received over 400,000 votes in 1988 for president as a third-party candidate. Most of these on-line polls attract anywhere from 1000 to 50,000 votes. Can we really dismiss the fact that his supporters are passionate and numerous. In these types of forums, thousands of passionate supporters can sway the results. That doesn’t make them spammers, it just highlights the fallacy of on-line polls. Your poll is not scientific and you should not be surprised that the results do not coincide with the views of the general public. Rather than admit the short comings of on-line polls, you say it is spam.
I think that is wrong to remove a sitting US congressman and a legitimate choice form your poll."
Out of curiousity I posted a response on each thread in the forum.
In two I defended Ron Paul from the blatant bashing (no curse words, no anger, just questions) and in two I did not mention Ron Paul and instead responded to statements regarding other candidates.
The result was that my Ron Paul statements have not posted yet and my other comments have. They are currently forcing all posts through an approval process, which is a little odd, but can be understandable. What I don't understand is why my fairly innocuous statements in defense of him take longer to approve than the very harsh and rude attacks.
If you are curious, my posts on the forum are found under the name Medius.
Thanks for the update. I have just come to the conclusion that their forums are a joke and not to be taken seriously.