Cheaters Tried To Rig Fat Bear Contest With Fake Votes

The Insider reports:

A flurry of fake votes threatened to throw the balance of the annual Fat Bear Week competition at the Katmai National Park in Alaska, a tournament where online users get to vote for their favorite beefed-up brown bears as they fatten themselves to survive the harsh winter ahead.

Organizers said  that as the competition neared voting for the final two contenders on Tuesday, they caught a surge of votes coming from fake emails and suspicious IP addresses.

Amber Kraft, the Interpretation and Education Program Manager for the National Park Service told Rolling Stone, “When there were just a few hours of voting left we noticed that 435 Holly received over 9,000 votes in a very short period of time.”

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Fat Bear Week remains a free, fair, and democratic institution, while the scheming individual(s) who nearly tarnished it with fake votes ought to be ashamed of what they’ve done. https://t.co/j8MJapzkDR

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 11, 2022