By Steve Abrahamson

Every year, Time Magazine runs a Top 100 Most Influential People article. Voting went up on their web site on April 10th.

I must confess, I first heard about it while watching the Colbert Report late last week. Stephen wanted to be #1 and exhorted his fans to go vote for him. As of this writing, he's shot up to the #1 spot, which I suppose some could see as ballot stuffing, but in actuality might show that he is quite literally that influential. At least when he specifically calls on his audience to do something.

What's this got to do with your friendly everyday tech blog?

Steve Jobs, as you might imagine, is on there too, as is Bill Gates, the Google guys, and a bunch more. Late last week, Jobs was hovering around 10th place with an "average rating" of 76 or so. Unfortunately, by my crude experiments, Time hasn't got any non-ballot-stuffing software in place; you can vote over and over and over, and it appears to count them all. In the last 12 hours, Steve's plummeted to 36th place, with an average rating of 50, yet his vote count hasn't even doubled. Which means all his votes have to be for the lowest vote, to skew the average that much.

Someone's stuffing an anti-Steve ballot.

Now, I'm from Chicago, so I'm no stranger to ballot-stuffing. Our motto here is "vote early, vote often." But I can't rest easy on this Steve attack, especially as Bill Gates (didn't he retire this year?) is now almost in the top 10.* I think our Steve has done a heckuva lot more to influence this year than Bill has.

So I think you should vote. All of you.

You can vote for any and all of them; a high ranking (like "100") works to move them up; a low one (like "1") works to move them down. The Time article can be found here. And if you want to go directly to the Steve Jobs page to vote, it can be found here.

Back in the Dark Days of Apple, Guy Kawasaki ran the EvangeList, a mail list that incited Mac zealots to let their voices be heard. I think Steve Jobs deserves to be at least in the top 10 most influential people of 2008, and if you do, get the word out, tell another Mac-loving list, and go cast your vote against the anti-Steve 'bot!

*Bruce Springsteen is #7 - can someone explain that to me?)

Update: Within the last few hours, Steve's position rose to #55. Come on, folks, we can do better!

If you have any thoughts on this, let us know what you think over in the comments or forums.