I have never been a fan of polling people with online forms. Online polling is so easily manipulated it is a joke. In most cases simply deleting your cookies will let you vote a second, third, fourth, fifth time. If that doesn’t work there is an endless stream of over things you can do to mess with the vote, which is why Ron Paul wins every online poll taken right after Republican debates.

Right not TechCrunch has an online poll about who will be America’s best choice for a technology friendly president. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul are leading with Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee coming in second. However Ron Paul’s vote total is two thousand votes higher than all of those who voted for Democratic candidates combined. In fact he has 1599 more votes than all of the other candidates Republican and Democrat combined.

A man who basically has admitted he knows nothing about the Internet and will cut government spending on all kinds of amazing science and math projects is the overwhelming choice of this online poll.

It isn’t just Ron Paul. I remember a few years ago watching a live program about America’s greatest president on MSNBC, I believe it was that network. There was a live online poll they were conducting throughout and Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were all in the lead until the last fifteen minutes when a small gang of people who were watching online banded together and put Ronald Reagan at the top. Delete cache, refresh, click, delete cache, refresh, click are the sounds that must have been heard in every one of their homes.

Every night Lou Dobbs puts a poll on his Web site. After forty-five minutes of spouting off against illegal immigration the poll results read as one might expect. “Is illegal immigration ruining American Democracy as we know it? 97% of you said yes! oh and btw this is not scientific”. Obviously it isn’t scientific, it is a bunch of people who already believe what you believe getting together and adding nothing to the human condition.

What is the point of online polling aside from sites like Tech Crunch getting a couple more page impressions for their ads? I don’t think we do and we never have and probably never will.

This nation has enough problems making sure people who vote in actual elections have their vote counted in a fair and honest manner. I hardly believe we can accomplish anything better with an online form.