hunterbishop.com

I called West Hawaii Today this morning to find out how long the Mayor's Poll will be up on the Web site.

The operator gave me to Reed Flickinger, the editor, who quickly went plenty defensive about the Web site polls. It sounded like he's a little tired of explaining how the polls aren't designed to be scientific, that they're done to boost traffic to the Web site, and that he has little to do with that side of the operation so he couldn't answer my question.

Flickinger transferred me to a woman in the the advertising department -- yikes! -- who could. But she wasn't in. I left a message. A couple of hours later I called again and got the same voice mail message. I also called the number of the guy she said to call on her voice mail message if I had a question and she wasn't in. He wasn't in.

So I waited for today's online edition to appear to see if the poll is still up. It is. You can still cast your vote. Though I played with it a little and it doesn't seem to allow you more than one vote from a computer. But you stuffers out there can find a way, yeah?

BTW, Angel Pilago maintains about a 45 percent share since yesterday and Billy Kenoi has moved into second place at 21 percent. Stacy Higa's at 15 percent and, amazingly, Lorraine Inouye is still languishing near the bottom with around five percent of the votes. I wonder if Lorraine's poor showing reflects an older constituency that is less likely to participate in an online survey. That's my guess.