A vote is a vote

Steve Crist broke the story on his blog that the lone vote for Icon Project as champion older female was actually a mistake and that the DRF employee meant to vote for Zenyatta.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I completely disagree with re-certifying the vote.

Granted, there were some hiccups in the voting process this year. Several voters (including this one) reported that the page "timed out" too quickly, which then required you to fill out the entire form again. Still, there is a confirmation stage before submitting your final ballot, and each category requires you to type in your responses, so there's some conscious effort needed at every level.

Initial conjecture indicated that the vote for Icon Project, which came from the DRF bloc, was actually a vote against synthetics. A DRF employee who posts to a listserv I read, noted that he knew several people who cast "anti synthetic votes," including possibly the Icon Project vote.

Now it turns out that it was just a mistake, and the Icon Project voter, who some wanted to crucify or at least scourge on a pillar, has cleared his name by pointing out that he voted for Zenyatta as Horse of the Year, so his champion older female vote must have been a mistake.

"There is no way I meant to do anything but put Zenyatta on top,” said Duke Dosik, vice president of custom publishing for Daily Racing Form.

Late last week I got an e-mail from one of my writers who said she realized she made a mistake in the champion female sprinter category, voting Diamondrella in first rather than Informed Decision. We figured "c'est la vie" and be more careful next time.

But why shouldn't her vote be changed now? Will you only be allowed to change your vote if you can corroborate your intention with a vote in another category?

Would we be going through this for any other category or for any other horse or for any other situation other than to make a champion unanimous? What if the vote had been 200-32 instead of 231-1? What if Dosik had voted anyone by Zenyatta as Horse of the Year?

I'm not trying to argue that Dosik really didn't mean to vote for Zenyatta. He obviously did; I just don't think votes should be changed once they're submitted even in the face of a perfect storm that points to a voter's likely original intent.

Maybe as a way to beef up business, racetracks can adopt this policy. Even if you leave a window with the wrong ticket, you can collect after the race if you show that you had the winning combination written on your program.