American Idol Controversy!

Photo courtesy of www.nj.com

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that AT&T may have influenced the final results of America's favorite karaoke competition. If you're like me, you're completely unaware of how anything with American Idol actually works. Apparently, viewers can either call or text their votes over a specified time period, with this time period generally extended for the show's finale. Additionally, the only way you can text votes is if you have AT&T. This is where the scandal begins...

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette first reported that representatives of AT&T provided "free text-messaging services and lessons in casting blocks of votes at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen." Not good. Even more damning, neither Fox nor AT&T would make statements regarding the allegations, leading to further speculation of complicity in altering the outcome of the competition. But what exactly constitutes "services" and "lessons?" The "lessons" reportedly focused on how to send "power texts," or the method of sending at least 10 votes at a time with a single text. The "services" may be even more disconcerting... AT&T, in a statement released yesterday, admitted that “In Arkansas, we were invited to attend the local watch parties organized by the community. A few local employees brought a small number of demo phones with them and provided texting tutorials to those who were interested.”

The NYT article lays out how this situation clearly violates the rules of American Idol voting:
"The show broadcasts an on-screen statement at the end of each episode warning that blocks of votes cast using 'technical enhancements' that unfairly influence the outcome of voting can be thrown out. And the show regularly states that text voting is open only to AT&T subscribers and is subject to normal rates."

So the good people of Arkansas may have cheated to help their home-town boy win. But in a competition that elicited almost 100 million votes, how significant could this have been? Let's do a little rounding. Let's say that voting is open for about four hours. Let's also assume that creating a "power text" of 10 votes (the minimum, remember... it could be even higher than 10) and sending it in takes about 30 seconds. That means that one person could vote approximately 4,800 times in 4 hours. Now let's assume that people who have to call in to vote (and deal with busy lines) can vote approximately once every 1.5 minutes. That's approximately 160 votes in 4 hours. Clearly, a 4,640 vote advantage is insignificant on an individual level. But let's assume that these "voting parties" had about 200 people at them (not inconceivable in the least). That becomes 928,000 votes... about 1% of all votes submitted. Wow.

Are these numbers hard and fast? Not in the least. And I have no idea what the actual margin of victory was for the competition (although Audra claims it was in the multiple millions... in which case, this entire point is moot). But how far have we fallen as a nation when elections are potentially corrupt?? Wait...