Registration instantly kills participation. This is a poll, not a transaction, or a subscription, or anything complicated like that - there's no reason to make it so.
A captcha would have worked nicely - hassle free, commitment free (remember, most of your visitors will flee for the hills as soon as you present a registration), and tough enough to crack that most people wouldn't even try. Even if you had a script that farmed captchas all day to manual labour the effect is still relatively small.
A captcha would have worked nicely - hassle free, commitment free (remember, most of your visitors will flee for the hills as soon as you present a registration), and tough enough to crack that most people wouldn't even try. Even if you had a script that farmed captchas all day to manual labour the effect is still relatively small.