A week ago we reported that conservative group American Commitment was poised to win a video contest organized by leftwing groups MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.US.
At that point, American Commitment’s video was well ahead of all of the competition.
As of now, it has earned roughly 15 times the votes of its nearest competition.
MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.US apparently don’t like losing their own contest to a conservative video that skewers one of the left’s big money men, Tom Steyer.
Suddenly, the contest rules have changed!
American Commitment released a statement on the trickery.
The contest rules previously stated: “Contest ends at 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 16, 2014. The sooner you post your video, the more time you’ll have to get votes.”
The contest rules have now been altered to say: “Contest submissions ends [sic] at 5:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, October 16, 2014. The sooner you post your video, the more time you’ll have to get votes. The 24-hour voting period begins on Thurdsday [sic] at 5pm ET, and ends on Friday at 5pm ET, October 17th, 2014”
That’s a major change in the voting period for the video contest. It negates all of the votes that the videos racked up since the contest actually began.
“MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.us have unfairly changed the rules in the middle of the game in a desperate attempt to stop our video from winning the competition,” said Phil Kerpen, president of American Commitment in a statement emailed to the Tatler. “Our entry about America’s number one fatcat campaign contributor, Tom Steyer—shines a spotlight on him and on the role hypocritical liberal billionaire contributors play in stoking feigned outrage about conservative donors. Americans have overwhelmingly supported our ad with their votes, and MoveOn.org and MAYDAY.us should respect the democratic process by letting these votes stand—and then put some of their own big money behind airing the ad on TV.”
Here is American Commitment’s video entry, which has pulled in 15 times the votes of any of its competitors — before MoveOn.org moved to change the rules.
This episode is just a small window through which we can see the contempt that many on the left actually have for fair voting, and even for rules that they establish that later become inconvenient to them.
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