SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) - Salt Lake City continues to trail Fresno, California in the Wal-Mart Fighting Hunger Together challenge. But there are rumblings that some of the Fresno folks aren't exactly playing by the book.
Fresno has had huge vote surges in the dead of night. One supporter bragged of staying online for 36-hours over two days and using a small facebook army to vote over and over and over again.
As best we can tell, the trick used is legitimate. It involves changing your account settings in your facebook account. You click on "PRIVACY SETTINGS" then "CUSTOMIZE" at the bottom center of the screen and then set the "POSTS BY ME" option to "EVERYONE."
When you go to Wal-Mart webpage
(click here) you click "LIKE" and leave a comment. Click the box to also post your comment on facebook. Everyone who "LIKES" that comment on your facebook page also gets counted as a vote. Depending on how many people see your facebook comment, your one vote can be multiplied many times.
You can also post as many comments on the Wal-Mart page as you like.
It is hardly in the spirit of "one man - one vote," but we're not electing a President. It is simply a popularity contest with a million dollar first prize for a lucky community food bank.
With that much at stake, you'd think that the people at the Utah Food Bank might be urging their supporters to "fight fire with fire!" But they're not. Ginette Bott said, "On our webpage (is) a list of instructions for people to look at and give the steps they need to go through to make their vote count. What we did was follow the outline that Wal-Mart had given us and we will go forward with that."
While it pales by comparison, the 2nd prize isn't bad. After the winner, the next five top vote-getters receive a $100,000 donation from Wal-Mart to fight hunger.
"We at the Utah Food Bank are incredibly indebted for all the help and support," said Bott.
