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Update: one fan voted for Kris Allen over 10,000 times?

by Bob Sassone, posted May 28th 2009 2:27PM

AT&TIf the reports coming from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette are true, maybe the news that we had yesterday about American Idol voting irregularities is meatier than we thought. One fan that says she voted for Kris Allen over 10,000 times.

It's also interesting that Idol rules state that power texting, the kind of texting that AT&T reps showed Kris Allen fans how to do, is against the rules. Isn't there some sort of built-in safety net for the voting? How can one fan vote over 10,000 times for one person? Shouldn't it be one person, one vote? Or one household, one vote? Or maybe one phone number, one vote? I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with the results. I have no idea. But it does seem that a better system could be in place.

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mail4bh

During the celebration after Rueben's win, his own mother said on live TV that she had voted for him over 200 times in the hotel room prior to coming over for the show. I don't remember any outrage about that. Is it ok to powervote if a black person does it and a black person wins, but not ok when a straight white person wins?

June 01 2009 at 4:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DanHo

Adam Lambert appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. That is against the rules.

AI told Ricky Braddy to take down his website because it showed an unfair advantage, but Idol let Adam Lambert appear on the cover of EW magazine. That is unfair and broke the rules of the show.

May 29 2009 at 3:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DanHo

Simon Cowell is an employee of Fremantle 19E and of American Idol yet Simon looked right into the camera and told viewers to vote for Adam Lambert.

That is illegal and against FCC rules. No employee of a game show can tell viewers to vote for a contestant.

Simon Cowell was supposed to critique contestants, NOT ENDORSE THEM.

THAT IS ILLEGAL...and everyone saw that.

Adam advance by Simon telling people to vote for him...Simon can't do that.

May 29 2009 at 1:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jo

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Among the Arkansans who helped Allen gain the title with their votes was Erika McMahan of Conway, who held a sign at her hometown's watch party that read: "We voted 11,692 times for Kris Allen last night."
"There were three of us. It wasn't all me!" she said.
Bobbie Kierna of Greenbrier, who wore a Kris Allen shirt to the Peabody finale party, said she stayed up texting until 11:48 p.m. Tuesday and sent 10,840 votes for Allen.

May 29 2009 at 12:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DanHo

Adam fans also power voted, but the media somehow is not interested in reporting that.

http://adam-lambert.org/hardcore-voting-guide/

That is only one of many. One was mysteriously taken off idolforums which is a popular AI website, but I screen captured it.

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3776/glambertscheatsmaller.jpg

Also according to Dial Idol, which is a general sampling of phone call busy signals, Kris Allen was a head of Adam, and that is not text messaging. So Kris was ahead of Adam on Dial Idol, which many people use to predict who will win Idol and who is going home.

http://www.dialidol.com/asp/predictions/predictions.asp

So apparently reporters have not reported all the cheating the Adam fans were doing and that Kris was ahead in the final evening as recorded by Dial Idol.

May 29 2009 at 10:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to DanHo's comment
quietstorm

The minute amount of difference on Dial Idol could not call a winner. It was a one point difference. What made the difference in their totals was the text voting, which Dial Idol can not measure. With the 60 phones lent by AT&T, power texting instruction, and no charge for the votes (everyone else had to pay), these votes really helped Kris. It was figured out that on that many phones, power voting for the 4 hour period, there was a potential of one million votes. Was this enough to alter the outcome? Probably not. But it was unethical and unfair to Adam. Shame on all involved. Power texting by fans is one thing; sponsors GIVING a million votes to one contestant is horribly WRONG.

May 30 2009 at 6:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Phish

Firstly, where there is a will there is a way, if adam had as-die-hard fans as kris, he would be the winner. So obviously Kris is more popular, and thats what matters.
If ppl are willing to spend time and money to vote 10,000 times for a contestant, then they have already found their winner. I'm sure these are the same mindless idiots who will buy each and every cd their idol puts out. So its win-win for everyone.

Second, Bob, how much are you being paid by Adam to write this garbage? Or does he pay u in sexual favors?

Although, i agree to the principle of 1 number, 1 vote, this would decrease the money generated by texting and phone charges, so why the heck would idol or at&t do that???

Someone calculated, that if idol drops to only 9 million viewers average, it would still generate more money than all the CSI shows combined and multiplied by 4!!!

May 29 2009 at 5:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nora

Well said Ryan ...

I also voted about 500 times . And most people I know where voting for Kris as well:) It seems that Adam (although talented) was not as apealing as we were led to believe .

May 28 2009 at 8:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MaryK

30 million people watched the show, but 100 million votes were counted. 'Nuff said.

May 28 2009 at 6:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jim

I love how voting is suddenly such a big deal because the sexually ambiguous guy lost. How about if we concentrate on limiting acutal voters in Chicago to one vote and actually being alive on election day

May 28 2009 at 6:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Jim's comment
Leroy

Sexual ambiguity is not the issue. The issue is that the boring guy won over the obvious star.

May 28 2009 at 6:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
the_0ne

I have to disagree on your "obvious star" assumption. As an entertainer, Adam was the much better candidate. As to singing? The high-pitched scream, like a whining teenager is what blew it for me. Kris was the much more controlled singer.

And I could care less if he bones goats. I wouldn't have voted for him because of the singing. He's actually seems like a really good person and extremely talented. I just couldn't get over the screaming.

My wife loved him btw and thought I was totally wrong about the whining, which in marriage, makes me wrong anyway. ;)

June 02 2009 at 12:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
R P

I said last week right after the finale...RE-VOTE! I've never gotten caught up in the AI voting nonsense before but this time it was SO obvious something went REALLY wrong.

Somehow somewhere somebody cheated big time.

I don't think it was Kris Allen himself, he's way too nice.

Maybe it is those ATT guys you mentioned or another big bossy somebody. But one thing is for sure...something really stinks about this years voting results.

Really stinks like the 2000 Florida vote.

May 28 2009 at 5:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to R P's comment
MONEY TALKS

Agree with R P -- there's something radically wrong with this year's votes. It's not Kris' fault, so to be fair, both Adam and Kris should share a 'Co-Idol' title. But is there anyone big enough who can step up to the plate and make this happen and put this ugly controversy to rest, once and for all?

May 28 2009 at 9:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dan

Why did something go wrong? Is it because that screaming guy didn't win? Just because your favorite didn't win, doesn't mean it was rigged.

Kris Allen was a better MUSICIAN who didn't feel the need to scream at us or go into a falsetto on every single song. Many people thought that Adam was a hack and simply not that good. Just because you think Adam was great does not mean the country felt that way.

If more people liked Adam, he would have won, the producers were obviously pushing for it!

June 04 2009 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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