Keith Baldrey and Mike Smyth in dead heat as most disliked B.C. political journalist

Many readers are aware that I won a landslide victory in a Straight online survey asking who is the most disliked political journalist in B.C.

The results seemed implausible because I captured about 90 percent of the votes.

In the words of Victoria journalist Tom Hawthorn, I was approaching an Enver Hoxha–like margin of victory.

The last time I examined the survey, I had 2,943 votes.

That compared to just 84 votes for the two tied for runner-up: Global TV's Keith Baldrey and the Province's Mike Smyth.

Not far behind at 79 was Black Press's resident pit bull, Tom Fletcher.

I took considerable pride in my victory.

But alas, it's looking like I'm the Sammy Sosa of Straight online polls.

That's because my first-place finish was turbocharged with the help of a banned substance—in this case a BOT (i.e. a robot)—that pushed up my numbers astronomically.

Our web team has informed me that as of 8:30 this morning, I had only received 57 authentic votes from human beings.

That leaves me in the middle of the pack, just two votes ahead of the Globe and Mail's Gary Mason.

(One of my votes came from CBC's Stephen Smart, because he told me this yesterday.)

More than 2,900 votes, according to one of our tech wizards, originated from a proxy server that refreshed the page and kept casting ballots.

This was easily gamed to make the votes appear to have come from anonymous users.

"After looking into the votes, it is obvious that some sort of botting has taken place between the 15th-17th," the tech guy wrote in an email.

So there you have it folks: Keith Baldrey and Mike Smyth are in a dead heat for the most disliked political journalist in B.C.

I didn't even get bronze.

The poll is still open.

This means that Baldrey has an opportunity to get his friends to cast votes for him so he can proudly declare that he is more despised than his press gallery colleague at the Province.

All I can say is I'm sorry that I'm no longer at the front of the pack.

I also regret that I didn't include the Province's Jon Ferry in the original online survey because I have a hunch that he would have left Baldrey and Smyth in the dust.

One day—perhaps after a particularly obnoxious column by Ferry on climate change—I'll post a poll seeking readers' responses to that.

But never forget that these surveys can be gamed by anyone, even global-warming deniers, who might want to put a positive shine on a man who still questions whether carbon emissions are linked to extreme weather events.