President Hinckley not eligible for Time's Most Influential Person
(BYU) Daily Universe 1Oct99 N1
By Diana Van Orden: NewsNet Staff Writer

The flood of e-mails circulated on LDS Internet discussion lists, newsgroups, websites and between Church members urging votes for LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley as Time magazine's Most Influential Person of the Century amy be an unfortunate waste of time. Time magazine officials say that President Hinckley does not qualify for the honor.

Earlier this year, Time selected a list of the 100 most influential people of the century, and says that its selection of the most influential will be limited to this group of 100. President Hinckley was not selected in the 100, which were included in 5 issues of the magazine in March of this year. Time magazine spokesman Todd Polkes says "The winner of the online poll is not necessarily the Person of the Century." He also adds that the purpose of the poll is to get feedback from Time's audience, and is just one of the factors that will be considered when Time chooses its Person of the Century for the upcoming December 27th issue."Ultimately, it will be the editor's choice," he said.

In addition, some zealous supporters of President Hinckley have flooded the voting mechanism, placing multiple votes and leading President Hinckley to be placed as high as number 13 in the on-line poll, with 32,000 votes. "We discovered a lot of the same people were voting for (President Hinckley) over and over,"Polkes said. This led Time to analyze the submissions and disqualify multiple votes. Hinckley now has about 6,000 votes and is no longer in the top twenty. Although the voting has been open since March 1998, most of the votes for President Hinckley have come in the past week.