Chris Elliott embarks on his finest piece of investigative journalism to date...

Chris Elliott embarks on his finest piece of investigative journalism to date…

Published: November 16, 2012

A couple of days ago I posted about being nominated by elliott.org for the “Favorite Travel Blogger” award. I shared my reasons for even mentioning it in the previous post, and it was intended more in good fun than anything else. The outpouring of support and kind comments reminded me once again that y’all are my BFFs. The voting was supposed to end at 5PM EST today, and last I checked I was leading by over 400 votes.

My mom even called me earlier this afternoon as she was clearing the mantle for my new award — “Benji, daddy and I are so proud of you, what a great honor.” It’s nice to have my career choice validated, even if for all the wrong reasons. 😉

Well, the poll just ended and I was looking forward to giving my acceptance speech until I saw this on Elliott’s site:

Update (11/16): Thank you for your participation in this survey. Unfortunately, we’ve had some reports of voting irregularities. I’m going to need to investigate them before posting the results. Thank you for your patience.

One eagle-eyed Tweeter was quick to point out that obviously there was fraud involved:

But even my good pal Chris Elliott saw through it:

“Voting irregularities?” Are you trying to tell me that me busing people to polling stations and offering them free meals isn’t allowed?!

So, Chris Elliott, you’re an investigative journalist — can’t wait to see you get to the bottom of this one!

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Scottrick Guest

November 17, 2012, 11:08 pm

Last I checked, it was about 400 for Ben, and 12 for the next guy. And given that Ben can get more than 12 comments on his own blog just for posting something about Honey Boo Boo, I'm pretty sure 400 votes was not that hard to achieve. You could even argue it's Elliott stuffing the box since I voted just so I could see the progress. I say, go back and remove the link to his site so he can't benefit from the association, or at least make it a nofollow.

‼ 0

Ken Guest

November 17, 2012, 9:20 pm

Interesting that you cant comment about this on his site. All the other articles he has written do allow comments. So essentially all your readers have been scammed. He picked up the traffic to his site so we could vote for you, yet he wont list you as a winner.

David Guest

November 17, 2012, 8:54 pm

Elliot is by far the worst travel blogger I have read, has no idea what he is talking about and in general is an idiot. I have no idea how he stays in the game.

Robert Hanson Diamond

November 17, 2012, 10:53 am

"What a ripoff. If I was ever tempted to read his trash this certainly cured me of it. The people have spoken and the idiot has decided not to listen. Why am I not surprised?" Yep, he used us all to bolster his blogs ratings, and then just to be "fair" said "everyone wins", rather then let someone who disagrees with his opinions be listed as the real winner. And he didn't even list the number of votes. My guess, Camels and Chocolates got 270 votes, and Lucky got 2,700, yet C and C gets listed first. Lucky, do us all a favor next year, and completely ignore this @#& "contest"!

Tracy T. Guest

November 17, 2012, 9:25 am

@MilageUpdate Go back to Lucky's first post about this contest. He links to past articles about Chris Ellliott in the commments section. Basically, Chris doesn't think loyalty programs are worthwhile.

Chris Elliott embarks on his finest piece of investigative journalism to date…

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