Straight questions

POSTED: Wednesday 20 April, 1130BST

Straight-talking Veritas have denied foul play after changing the wording of an online poll.

Kilroy-Silk provokes strong reactions

A negative was added to the question to change it from "Do you believe the UK should adopt the new European constitution?" to "Do you believe the UK should not adopt the new European constitution?" The yes and no results were swapped to reflect the change.

Some are complaining the party just didn't like the way the survey was going, but Veritas say the poll was hijacked by a pro-Europe campaign.

Webmaster John de Roeck told the Election Monitor the change was intended to test whether an automatic yes vote had been set up, which didn't even require people to read the question.

He said the automatic voting continued with no regard to the new question. "So we took the poll down and replaced it with one that's not so prone to cheating."

(PS. Spotted - an online forum encouraging people to vote yes to annoy Kilroy-Silk "regardless of what you really think".)

Your comments

If Veritas didn't like the result of a poll on their own website couldn't they just fake the results rather than go to all this trouble? Who'd know or care anyway? Based on this theory I'm inclined to agree with Kilroy's version of events.
Peter, Nottingham

I don't buy that Veritas were simply trying to out-fox 'automatic' votes. From data and screenshots posted elsewhere it is clear they panicked, added up to 500 votes in their favour, and when that didn't work, swapped the question over *without* the corresponding votes. It stinks of an amateur party unable to deal with things not going in their favour. The irony of Veritas meaning "truth" is not lost on the many that have read the full story.
Ian B, London

I know the group involved in the attempt to skew the vote, and Veritas clearly knew what was happening too. Surely they're entitled to defend their poll from deliberate sabotage?
John Derrick, London

I'm with Tom Steuart-Feilding - Veritas and Kilroy-Silk are rapidly putting political satirists out of business; you simply can't make this stuff up! It wouldn't be out of place in a Tom Sharpe novel.
H, Cambridge

How sad that all the pro-EU apologists can do is try to skew online opinion polls. Why can't they spend their time making a decent case? Silly question.
Mike Harvey, Woking

The poll would never have been accurate anyway. How many non-veritas supporters would go to the veritas website?
Pollster, UK

Well you know what they say "on the internet no-one knows you're a dog (or a php script that automatically barks every 15 seconds)"
Dan Russell, Chesterfield

I am very aware of a group that set out to disrupt the natural progress of this poll. They ran an on-line forum encouraging people to spoil the vote for Veritas. At times like this, even some on the liberal left clearly lack credibility.
Kevin Hailes, Orpington Kent

Surely the BBC could have given them advice on the pointlessness of online polls? It is, however, quite hard to find their website (using google)
Al Storer, St Austell, Cornwall

The No votes started climbing when they changed the poll. There was nothing automatic about it.
Oli, London

I'm one of those liberalists in London that the Veritas party don't like, so my comment would probably be discounted by them on that ground. If a vote isn't going the way you want it to, surely the thing to do is to review your policy on the matter. Changing the question to suit your needs (with a fairly bad negative addition just to confuse people who do want to vote), smells far too fishy for me to take that particular party seriously.
Richie Ellison, London, UK

I've got some non-political sympathy for Veritas here. Why should a large group of campaigners be allowed to skew a poll for their own purposes? Who cares Veritas changed the question? They transferred the votes as they did it, anyway.
Mary Scott, Belfast

Veritas shouldn't be so surprised that when people are given a poll, they may not vote exactly how you want them to vote. When will they understand that their party is supported by a minority of people, and so their favoured result will always have the minority vote?
Jonathan Reeves, Southampton, UK

I can't be alone in finding this all rather funny - Veritas lack credibility as it is and this further undermines them as a serious political party.
Tom Steuart-Feilding, Bristol, UK

Just a quick word here from a person who administers online polling and surveying for a job... Auto-voting is where some set up a system (of sorts) to vote for one choice non-stop, in this case it was auto-set to answer 'YES'. If they'd changed the question to "Do you believe the UK should not adopt the new European constitution?", the system would not have picked this up and continued voting 'YES', thus striking a blow for the 'anti-europe side' But what is clear talking to other people and viewing the poll results stage by stage is that when the question changed so did the voting, from 'YES' (anti-europe now) to 'NO' (now pro-europe) thus pretty much ruling out the presence of an automatic voting system. I think that Veritas just didn't like where this was going.
Thomas Hayes, London, UK

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