Jan.18/06 – Jack Kapica, Cyberia Technology columnist on the Globe and Mail website
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Whack-a-pol: Here’s an election poll nobody wants to win: A website called www.WhackthePM.ca, created by the clever and irreverent minds of Bill and Franke James of Toronto’s The James Gang, not only sweetens an otherwise humourless campaign, but also ties a fun game to a (highly informal) poll.
WhackthePM.ca is a variation of the old Whack-a-Mole game, but each round asks a real question, and a cartoon of each of the leaders (Jean Duceppe, Stephen Harper, Paul Martin, Jack Layton and the Greens’ Jim Harris) offers his position  well, a smart-assed version of what they are actually saying. Players get to whack the candidate with the position they like the least (on guns, for instance, or medicare).
The winner so far? Paul Martin by a country mile. Or kilometre. Whatever. As of today, he’s been whacked by 38 per cent of the players, and earned the title of Despised. He is followed by Stephen Harper (23 per cent, for a rank of Irritating), Gilles Duceppe (Annoying) and Jack Layton (Boring) (14 per cent each) and Jim Harris (11 per cent and Useless).
WhackthePM.ca is also a strategic voting tool  enter your postal code, and a list of the candidates in your riding will pop up, telling you how to vote to defeat the leader of your choice.
Franke James says the website offers players an “opportunity to whack some sense into their leaders.” She adds that the turning point in the James Gang’s poll was the Liberal’s Army attack ad. “I think Martin’s weaving and dodging about the ad only escalated [player’s] desire to whack him.”