Although I've never voted on AI nor sent a TM to anyone, either, I think there's merit to it. Perhaps because I don't have any kids in my life between the ages of about 10 to 16, I'm curious about their attitudes and point of view. So I check out the AI boards fairly often. Aside from some non-AI-related things, like posters who are obviously kids saying they are in their 20's or 30's, and the many posters with woeful lack of spelling skills [grin], the passion the kids expend over their favorites is equal to, if not greater than what we've seen on FR recently about Terri Schiavo.
Each week, millions of kids vote literally hundreds and hundreds of times (great training for when they grow up and become Democrats, LOL!). There were some 32,000,000 votes cast this week alone, or over 3 million per contestant if all got roughly an equal number. A large percentage undoubtedly are TM votes. However, you can vote as many times as you want using land-line phones, computer speed-dialers, cells, TM, etc.
The people who get the most votes in per night are those lucky enough to own computers with high-speed internet connections and sophisticated speed-dialing software. The computer does the dialing and voting far more rapidly than any human can keep hitting the redial button on their phone.
The AI producers never release the vote breakdown, but I think it's safe to conclude that even the contestant voted off in any given week gets a ton of votes. Right now over on the AI boards, there are Jessica Sierra voters posting angry comments that sound a lot like the angry adults who've been all over FR these last couple of weeks.
If you're voting via phone..you have to get through, right..I understand most people don't get through..whereas with TM..you gett hrough as many times asd you want, depending on how fast you can hit the buttons, and assumoing you are willng to pay, right?..There was a thread here yesterday I think, about some parent who went ballistiic when his daughter ran up a $1500 phone bill last month..99% of which was spent sending TMs during school hours..