It does not happen often, but on occasion our web polls, located on the front page of the site, fall victim to foul play.

One of those occasions was overnight Monday.

Last week we posted a web poll, asking readers to share their opinions on Nashua School Superintendent Dr Julia Earl. As of Sunday, sentiment was running 10 to 1 against the school board reinstating her.

This morning, the poll results had reversed, with the voting 6 to 4 in favor of Dr. Earl being reinstated.

Upon closer examination, more than 2,000 of those votes 'in favor' had come from a single Internet address - mostly between midnight and 6 a.m. this morning. Apparently someone with a bit of computer skill had set up a script, or some other process to vote more than 200 times per hour. Hour after hour.

We do not consider these Web polls to be scientific in any way, and a certain amount of shenanigans are expected. However, in this case the effort was a bit too concerted, so we pulled the poll offline.

In any case, if you happen to know someone in the Austin, TX area, using Southwest Bell as their Internet provider, let them know - nicely done and we appreciate your interest.

From our server logs:

adsl-216-62-203-23.dsl.austtx.swbell.net