By C.J. Carnacchio
Leader Editor
The drive to transform Oxford Village into a city has entered the realm of cyberspace.
Anyone wishing to learn more about the pro-cityhood movement can log on to www.OxfordCityhood.com.
The website was set-up by cityhood proponent and movement founder Tracy A. Miller, an Oxford Lakes resident and husband of village Councilwoman Renee Donovan.
Miller said he decided to create the website after some residents at a council meeting asked if he had one offering additional information.
As of July 30, 401 visitors have logged on to the site to learn about the benefits and myths of cityhood, who’s endorsed the idea and what’s legally required to incorporate as a city.
Visitors are also able to communicate with Miller via the site.
“There’s a place in there where folks viewing the site can send in requests or ask questions,” Miller said. “And as they ask questions, I’ll try to answer those questions. And if I get asked the same ones enough, I’ll add those to the site.”
“So far, I’ve pretty much added any question (and answer) that anybody has sent me an e-mail on,” he added.
Miller said more “factual information” will be added to site as he accumulates it through his research.
“We’re still adding to it daily,” he said.
Although the site was designed to be educational tool to inform residents about the cityhood movement, unfortunately it’s already been abused by a handful of individuals.
The site previously had an on-line polling area where visitors could vote either for or against cityhood thereby allowing Miller to gauge public opinion.
When this reporter logged onto the site at 3:35 p.m. July 24, the poll results indicated a total of 924 people had voted on-line, 653 in favor of cityhood and 271 against.
However, this reporter was registered as visitor Number 348.
When asked about this discrepancy, Miller replied, “If you look at the numbers, you can tell the ballots were stuffed.”
Miller explained that when the site was created a security measure was installed to ensure that each visitor was only able to vote once in the poll.
However, “folks that were computer savy realized how to get around” this and “were driving up the vote counts,” he said.
“We started watching the number of votes exceed the number of visits,” Miller said. “And we’re going, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a problem here.’”
“Just in case there were problems,” Miller said a log of the visitors was kept, which when printed out was 274 pages.
While combing through the log “we noticed that the same individuals were coming in and re-voting. There’s about six of them.”
Miller said both the “yes” and “no” votes were inflated by these six individuals, who were voting “20, 30, 40 times” in one visit.
“It was an abuse on both sides,” he said.
Since he couldn’t figure out how to stop them, Miller temporarily pulled the plug on the polling area.
Visitors attempting to vote are now greeted with this message – “Shame on you!! Because of obvious ballot stuffing this poll has been removed! The IP addresses of the violators have been recorded, and if the law permits these IP addresses will be posted on this site in the near future for all legitimate visitors to view.”
Miller said he’s trying to come up with a way to prevent this from happening again and bring back the poll.