An experiment in democracy went awry this week in Normal, when online voting for a new minor league baseball team’s name ended up with a risque term hacked to the top of the list, a suspected hijacking by the Colbert Nation and one popular suggestion that turned out to be a reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
By Friday, the still-unnamed team had launched a new online voting site that required people to register their e-mail addresses. It was the first time a Frontier League team had to take such “extreme” measures, said Steve Malliet, president of Normal Professional Baseball.
Officials knew something was off when they’d gathered more than 750,000 votes in less than seven days.
“We know the interest is high, but that’s ridiculous,” Malliet said.
A hacker voted more than 600,0000 times for The Nutz, he said, which, in the most benign light, could refer to adjoining Bloomington as the birthplace of Beer Nuts.
There also was suspected vote tampering with The Coal Bears, which overnight received more than 150,000 votes, apparently from fans of comedian Stephen Colbert, perhaps frustrated that NASA named only a treadmill after him this month even though he dominated online voting for a new space station room’s moniker.
The two remaining candidates — the NightHawks and the Cornbelters — garnered 3,200 and 540 votes, respectively. But NightHawks didn’t make the cut after officials learned some disturbing news.
“I am grateful to the good people of Normal West High School and others in the community for letting us know that Night Hawk is a position of responsibility in the Ku Klux Klan,” Malliet said in a statement.
Voting ends Sunday at midnight, with the name to be announced next month. The team is scheduled to begin playing in May 2010.
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Of course, no matter what the voters come up with, the team’s management reserves the right to choose the name itself. So all you fans of Seymour Butz might as well forget it.