Hmmm. For your competition, I'd perhaps then not use a poll option, but something more like an article. Or a photo album.
This might be the purist in me talking, but I believe everything has its purpose. When I was looking for a job, I was asked when I'd use a database trigger. I replied it depended on the situation, and the interviewer told me an anekdote where their DBA always, regardless of the question, would think 20 minutes, and then state it would have to be a trigger ;)
If you ask me, sure, you can create a competition with a poll. However, I can imagine it not being very practical. Especially not from a UI perspective, but technically, you're also more or less forcing yourself to bend backwards.
As a technical answer, I really cannot think of a way to cater to your needs. AJAX might do it, but my guess is you're trying to limit network roundtrips. That kind of beats the purpose, so that would not really help too much.
In Winforms, I could easily come up with a solution, but unfortunately, this isn't Winforms.
Cheers.
Peter
http://entropia-online.blogspot.com/