PORT ANGELES — After a long battle, Port Angeles came in second to Chattanooga, Tenn., in Outside magazine’s online contest to determine the nation’s Best Town Ever for 2015.
The final tally announced tonight in the contest that began May 4 was 62,130 votes, or 47.95 percent, for Port Angeles to Chattanooga’s 67,432 votes, or 52.05 percent.
But Port Angeles didn’t lose, said Lesley Robertson, founder of Revitalize Port Angeles, a Facebook group with more than 1,100 members that was one of the primary movers in getting out that vote.
“I could not be prouder of the town right now,” she said tonight at a party for Port Angeles boosters at Fanaticus restaurant.
“People came together in a way that I didn’t even think was possible — and I’m an optimist.”
A wild-card entry, Port Angeles won five rounds in the 64-city tournament-style elimination contest before competing against Chattanooga, the Southern Division winner, and former national winner of the annual Outside contest.
The contest seemed mismatched — Port Angeles, with a population of 19,000 up against the Tennessee town of more than 170,000.
But Port Angeles — which garnered more than three times its population in votes against the popular Southern city — showed itself to be the little town that could.
It remains the Western Division champ, and will be profiled as a finalist in the September issue of Outside, a nationally recognized outdoor and adventure magazine.
“People have been saying for days that we’ve already won,” Robertson said.
“We won days ago. We won weeks ago. When we all decided to come together to do this, we won.
“We have figured out that this place is really, really, really cool and we got to tell the world about this,” Robertson said.
“There are thousands more people who now know about this place who didn’t know about it before.”
Several commenters on the Outside website at http://tinyurl.com/pdn-best said that, having seen photographs and read reports of the natural beauty of Port Angeles, plan to visit.
Robertson said she already has heard of area inns and bed and breakfasts getting calls from people booking trips.
Fans of Port Angeles outperformed voters backing Santa Barbara, Calif., Bainbridge Island; Glenwood Springs, Colo.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Bar Harbor, Maine in the contest.
Signs urging residents to vote for their town went up all over — on business readerboards, windows and restaurant tables — as organizations ranging from the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce to Black Ball Ferry Line promoted voting.
Support also came from outside town.
Gov. Jay Inslee, the band Emblem3, U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and Congressman Derek Kilmer — a Port Angeles native — tweeted their support.
Western Washington University called for votes on its Facebook page and the Seahawks called on people to vote for Port Angeles, Robertson said.
Tonight’s party at Fanaticus was a true celebration, she said.
“We’re celebrating the fact that we live in one of the most incredible places on earth and we have the chance to celebrate that together,” she said.
“We’re talking about how we have to take this positive energy and make use of it.
“We’ve all realized what is possible if we work together.”
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or at leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
Earlier story
By Arwyn Rice
Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — Fraudulent posts, including one supposedly from a deceased woman, an allegation of voter fraud and a Google suspicion that Outside magazine’s website had been hacked, excited passions on the final day of Internet voting in the “Best Town Ever” contest.
The contest pitting Port Angeles against Chattanooga, Tenn., to be named the winning city nationwide ends at 8:59 p.m. Thursday.
Results of the voting will be available on the Peninsula Daily News’ website, www.peninsuladailynews.com.
As of 5:45 p.m., Port Angeles trailed Chattanooga at http://tinyurl.com/pdn-best, with 60,278 votes, or 48.09 percent, to Chattanooga’s 65,062 votes, or 51.91 percent.
On Thursday morning, Google marked Outside’s website listing with a notice: “This site may be hacked.”
The warning linked readers to a listing that explained Google displays the message “when we believe a hacker might have changed some of the existing pages on the site or added new spam pages. If you visit the site, you could be redirected to spam or malware.”
Outside editors did not return repeated calls from the PDN to clarify the website’s security status and the status of the contest Thursday.
Outside sponsored the 64-city tournament-style elimination contest that set the west champion, Port Angeles, against the east champion, Chattanooga, which previously won the nationwide contest in 2011.
Commenters on Outside’s website accused Port Angeles supporters of voter fraud after, at one point in the contest, about 8,000 votes for Port Angeles appeared overnight.
Port Angeles boosters worried the contest would end with tainted results.
“No one really knows what happened,” said Mark Ohman, website manager for Revitalize Port Angeles, one of the organizations leading the charge for votes in the contest.
Ohman said supporters inquired as to how it may have happened, wanting a clean race for the win.
“We wanted to know where it came from,” he said.
He said Outside editors reported that they investigated the surge in votes and found no apparent cheating or “voting bot,” a program designed to automatically re-vote repeatedly.
It was speculated that the votes appeared after several Seattle-area television stations aired reports on the contest, leading to Seattle-area viewers all voting at once.
After the barrage of votes showed up, Outside added a “gatekeeper” feature to the voting method, requiring voters to enter a number drawn from a slightly altered picture posted, which ensures that voters are human, rather than a voting “bot.”
“It was because of concern that was raised by the votes. It was done to allay concerns about it,” Ohman said.
Ohman said a second concern for Port Angeles supporters was a series of posted comments on the Outside website claiming to be from Port Angeles residents or former Port Angeles residents, many of which savaged the town’s reputation.
“[The people whose names were used] said it wasn’t them,” he said.
He said the fraudulent posts could hurt the reputations of those people.
The names used to denigrate Port Angeles included that of the late Diane Schostak, a tireless supporter of North Olympic Peninsula tourism who died of breast cancer in March.
The person or people also used the names of resident Catherine Harper and Alan Turner, owner of Port Book and News, both of whom denied having any connection with the postings.
“I was a bit disturbed about it,” Turner said.
However, Turner added, anyone who knew him would never believe that he had posted the negative things that appeared on the forum.
“Anyone who knows us knows it wasn’t us and isn’t a customer of this bookstore or any other bookstore in town,” he said.
Turner said a tech-savvy employee “took back” the name online, and another posted a disclaimer on the bookstore’s Facebook account.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
