LiveJournal Election '08 Plagued by Death Threats, Harry Potter Male Pregnancies

Blogging service LiveJournal.com, formerly owned by San Francisco-based SixApart up until December 2007 and now owned by Russian-based media company SUP (with its USA-based LiveJournal, Inc. offices located here at 576 Folsom St.), is currently holding its first annual User Representative Election for a seat on the LiveJournal Advisory Board. The duties include traveling to Istanbul once a year (free vacation!) for an in-person meeting with other Board members along with quarterly conference calls and other business.

In what seemed to start as a smooth campaign process, it has quickly turned volatile. There have been accusations of flashing campaign images causing photosensitive epileptic bloggers to have seizures and death threats against the two leading candidates in the poll. (Read Valleywag's take on the harrowing tale here.)

There's also random amounts of Harry Potter "fandom" slash-fiction being released into the air. Additionally, there is an entire community on LiveJournal devoted to writing about Harry Potter male characters becoming pregnant. The leading candidate in the poll, LegoMyMalfoy (who already works for LiveJournal on the Abuse Prevention Team -- yay for nepotism!), is reportedly receiving the majority of her votes from these "fandom" bloggers through their sock puppet role-playing game accounts. Some users reportedly have over 200 LiveJournal accounts for role-playing purposes. According to LiveJournal, as long as the account was created before March 2008 and has a unique e-mail address, the vote counts.