Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Voting for Australian Mammal of the Year 2023 is now open!
To vote, and for more information on the voting process, click here.
It seems that, like New Zealand’s annual Bird of the Year competition, COSMOS’s first Australian Mammal of the Year poll has been subject to voter interference.
In good news for mammals, but bad news for our electoral system, we’ve discovered that a few species’ passionate supporters have leapt ahead due to some anomalous voting in the final days before the poll to find our finalists closes.
While we encouraged you to vote early and vote often for your favourite mammals, we were only referring to voters with a pulse! We’ve become aware of these and have analysed all categories. Like a dingo on the wrong side of the dog fence, they have been removed from the count.
While the level of passion for our wonderful mammals is incredible, we want to ensure that the Mammal of the Year competition remains a fun and fair fight between all the nominees. After all, if you can’t rely on a popular vote for Australian Mammals, what hope is there?
Voting across the eight categories for the Top Ten will close midnight Wednesday August 10, but rest assured that we’ll have scrutineers poring over the count again to identify any irregularities and make sure that the final tallies are genuine.
The announcement of the finalists and the last round of voting will open next week on Monday 15th August, and from there, the lowest ranked finalists will be systemically struck off the list until only the Mammal of the Year is left standing (or swimming), as selected by humans and not robots.