I am only giving up the relentless campaigning that has earned me the votes I have. The problem is that everyone has reached the point of fatigue - sick of hearing about it. I have become a nuisance to my professional colleagues, friends, and family. 15 days is a LOT to be bombarded with constant daily appeals for votes on your Facebook timeline, text messages, forums, etc. I have to stop (or drastically slow down) or I will have no dignity left at the end.
The way this has played out is crushing, disappointing, and sad. If I include the video itself, I am creeping up on an 80 hour marathon effort to win. That is not a contest, it's a job. The effort has beat me up. All the seeds have been planted, and I can only hope that they grow.
Since the opportunity to cheat undetected is so obvious, even if I miraculously convince hundred of people to vote for me every day - it would still not be enough to overcome anyone that is willing to push the rules since they would match/exceed any performance that my entry has.
I cannot throw another week away. I don't want to throw another week away.
I have around 3058 votes right now after 7 voting days. That is a daily average of 437 votes or 145 people. That is the result of an enormous effort by a lot of people writing and sharing on my behalf to a huge audience of people in my social connections - 100k plus. Nilu J, a young student is miraculously gaining far faster and seem to pickup speed even more when other votes burst upward. Now that I have truly saturated by 1st degree audience (the ones that know me), it is exponentially more difficult to get more votes from total strangers that don't have anything to do with EE. I was hoping for a rally with the EEVBlog, but the human nature is the same here as anywhere else. Out of many thousands of members, only a handful are looking at the contest and a tiny fraction of those are actually voting for someone. At this stage, I would need to double my current voting numbers until the end to have a chance and that is assuming no one buys votes. If there is vote buying or other cheating - I would practically need to crash the site with votes. Maybe I get Justin Beiber to tweet that he will take a young girl on a date if they vote for Carlos A? That would do it.
Nilu J has a daily average of 588 or 196 voters but is also accelerating. This could be legitimate or not, there really is no way to police it. If it is legitimate, it points to the problem that this is a social media race that has nothing at all to do with the entries or the prize or Keysight. If it is not legitimate, it points to the gaping flaw in the voting system where anyone can manipulate the votes will very little effort. Either way - not good. Not fun. Not fair.