https://ift.tt/QqpCbLr public was invited to vote for the bear worthy of the title Fattest Bear in Alaska.
But this year’s “Fat Bear Week” competition turned into an election drama in Alaska: During the vote, the ballot boxes were stuffed, and the organizers demoted a candidate to preserve the integrity of the election.
The competition, held annually by Katmai National Park to raise awareness about animal welfare, brown bears and their incredible metabolism, offered a model of probity three weeks before the U.S. midterm elections.
In the competition’s semifinal round, the vote was tarnished by attempted fraud: Holly, aka Bear 435, unfairly stole victory from Bear 747, whose build is worthy of a Boeing airplane, thanks to a spam campaign.
“Like bears stuff their face with fish, our ballot box, too, has been stuffed,” the national park tweeted Sunday evening, announcing the scandal. It said it had received a slew of emails at the last minute.
“Fortunately, it is easy for us to tell which votes are fraudulent,” the organizers assured.
After the fraudulent votes — about 9,000 of them — were removed in a recount, Bear 747 was declared the winner of the round. The champion will be named Wednesday.
Started as a joke in 2014, the competition is now a sensation in the United States. In 2021, more than 800,000 people voted for their favorite chubby bear.
The public can choose their favorite colossus by watching the candidates, who eat up to 45 kilos of salmon a day, thanks to the cameras of Explore, an environmental defense non-governmental organization.
The bears, ursus arctos, hibernate in the winter, living off their accumulated fat. When they emerge in the spring, they’ve lost their winter girth. They spend the summer and fall packing the pounds back on again, gaining up to 50% of their body weight.
Author webdesk@voanews.com (Agence France-Presse)
Source : VOA