Secret Service Investigating Facebook Poll

What's scarier: the person who creates and uploads a negative, possibly threatening poll, or the people who actually participate? Over the weekend, Facebook removed a poll from its website, and now the Secret Service has gotten involved, currently conducting an investigation. While polling seems to be one of the more popular socialization tools on the social networking site, the one in question proved popular and tasteless at the same time.

So what's the big deal? The poll asked if President Barack Obama should be killed. The poll provided four answers: Yes, Maybe, If he cuts my health care, and No. At the time The Huffington Post grabbed a screenshot before it was pulled on Saturday, 731 Facebook members had already cast their vote. However because the social website immediately disabled the poll, the results were not available at the time of this writing.

According to The Associated Press, an independent person authored the poll using an add-on application that Facebook has now banned from the site. "The third-party application that enabled an individual user to create the offensive poll was brought to our attention this morning," said Barry Schnitt, Facebook's spokesman for policy.

Darrin Blackford, a spokesman for the Secret Service, added that the White House is taking the appropriate steps in regards to the possible threat. "We take these things seriously," he said. His comment reflects recent findings that the White House logs comments made by users visiting its Facebook page. The Political Carnival originally spotted the poll and contacted both Facebook and the Secret Service Saturday.