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Here's a little bit more info by the way.

If I take the link to the Polls at the the bottom of the Poll result box it shows the latest Poll as "Open" even though I've already voted in it.

But if I click on the poll link from that page it just takes me to the Poll results not to the vote page. If I click on any of the other "Open" links it takes me to a vote screen.

So I believe that there might be two conflicting systems at work here. I'm guessing that there is a system on Free Republic's server that "remembers" who's voted. But there is probably also an additional system that queries cookies on the client computer.

These systems might manage different things. Like one managing the "Poll Box" placement and Open/Voted status. While the other manages whether to display the vote prompt or the poll results. I believe that it is possible for these two systems to have differing results.

For instance, I've voted in the latest poll on my mac at home. The server and the cookies probably agree and my poll results are shown below all my sidebars with everything else normal. But at work my cookies probably don't register that I've voted but the server does.

This conflict might result in the two curious phenomena that I've noted.

1) Poll results shown above sidebars instead of below. Usually when it's above it's to ask you to vote not to display poll results
2) Text on "Available Polls" page says "Open" even though I've voted but link goes to poll results instead of vote page.

Maybe that will help.