Stuffing the Ballot Box?

Today, the MLB announced that they deleted between 60 to 65 million all-star ballot votes. Up until today, out of the eight field positions and the designated hitter position, Royals players led the votes in every position except for one of the outfield spots which was held by Mike Trout.

Now while it's hard to argue that several of the Royals aren't deserving of an all-star spot, it's hard to make a case for a player such as their second baseman Omar Infante. Beating out the Astros' Jose Altuve to this point, Infante is only hitting .227 with no homeruns, no stolen bases, and only 18 RBI's. Maybe if he had a glove like Ozzie Smith, could some sort of case be made, but Infante doesn't possess a strong glove either.

So far the MLB hasn't revealed how they determined which votes to delete and which ones they kept or even how it has affected the voting so far. If they deleted all votes in the Kansas City area, then Royals players who are deserving of being considered an all-star such as Salvador Perez, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, and Alex Gordon will be hurt in the process. Plus who's to say that another team wasn't stuffing the ballot box too, but just not as well as some suspected the Royals of doing.

Officials from the MLB insist that they haven't found any signs of cheating and have even cited that strong following the Royals have built online in the past couple of years. Even so, they still threw out millions of votes. One in five votes approximately since 300 million votes have been tallied so far, on pace to break the all-time mark of 350 million taken in 2012. This also takes in the fact that the MLB stopped accepting paper ballots at the games, converting the whole process to online only.

So with everything online now, could the Royals be the team that has cheated in some form or at least "stuffed the ballots" better than any other team? Rob Neyer of Fox Sports said on the subject, "But I’ve talked myself into thinking that nobody has hijacked the balloting this year. If only because if it were that easy, a) somebody would have done it before, and b) somebody would be doing it this year, for some other team."

While voters have been restricted to 35 votes per email address, the average online user has multiple email addresses. Is this really different than the paper ballots though? In the past, it was suspected that employees of ball clubs would fill out a massive amount of ballots, favoring their own team's players, and stuff the boxes with those ballots. Doing it this way, it is a lot easier to stuff the ballot box in favor of your team than it would be online.

So how would the MLB remedy this? Should a system be setup based on players stats purely that send them to the all-star game? If this is the case, then players such as Cal Ripken Jr. or Derek Jeter would have never got to have their last hurrah in the spotlight, which led to some of the game's most memorable moments.

Should players vote? While this seems the most fair, players in the past have also carried grudges against particular opponents that would eliminate some of the best players who were less likeable. Imagine if there was an all-star game in the early 20th century, but Ty Cobb never made it because he was so hated. Cobb was one of the best players of all-time, but he was also one of the most hated by his opponents.

Should the writers vote? This could have been a viable solution pre-internet and television just as it was originally with the Hall of Fame voting process, but even writers have shown that they too have biases against players that they don't like. If the writers were in control of the all-star ballots, players like Barry Bonds would have had a lot of trouble getting into the all-star game.

The best solution is to limit the ballots a fan could submit. With the 35 votes per email address, it is worth it for a "fan" to create multiple email addresses and vote 35 times with each email address. I suggest limiting the votes to one vote per email address. This way it is not really worth it for a "fan" to create multiple email addresses and vote because of the hassle it would create. The true votes would still go through and just like the political election process, each person's vote would carry no more weight than the next person.