The San Jose Mercury reports that Hackers broke their way into the computer server that was storing the vote count for the Sonoma-Marin World's Ugliest Dog Contest, and deleted some votes.

The leading contestant, Pee Wee, who we featured here on DoggieNews, had 40,000 votes erased, while another dog, Victoria, had 30,000 votes erased.

That put Lucille Bald -- a purebred Chinese Crested from Florida -- in the lead until fair officials noticed the vote theft. Contest officials said they do not believe there is any link between Lucille Bald and the presidential-votes controversy in the dog's home state several years ago.

Contest officials said they installed a firewall, and will restart the voting May 22.