"American Idol" -- Rigged ballotting?

Fox Television ^ | May 13, 2003 | TommyDale

[TommyDale]

Ordinarily, it is difficult to get through for a while, since everyone calls starting at 9:00 pm. Tonight, there was no dial tone in parts of the Raleigh, NC area. Well after 60 minutes, there is a "quick busy", meaning the telephone system is not working correctly. I continually received busy signals even after only dialing the '1'. How can the voting be tabulated fairly if people in the home city of Clay Aiken can't even cast their votes??

[TommyDale]

Anyone else notice this tonight?

[scab4faa]

Hmmm.. well... nope still don't care....

[discostu]

It would only be rigged if Fox had done something to mess up the phone system. As it is it's just luck of the draw, sometimes phone systems get f'd up.

[Texas Eagle]

How did the contestants do? The show doesn't come on for another hour here.

[lelio]

I stopped watching after they canned the chick with the crimminal background.

[Wait4Truth]

I don't live in North Carolina but I sure hope you find a way to let Fox know about this. Clay deserves to win this competition. He is the best and has been my favorite since the first night. Start howling to the network and get everybody you know to do the same. God bless!

[TommyDale]

Actually, the Fox people do control which time zones, or which area codes, can get through. My question is whether the "fix is in" to keep the votes down against the local star.

[TommyDale]

Can't find an email address for Fox. Anyone out there know it?

[mystery-ak]

Clay sang my song tonight, Unchained Melody...sent shivers down my spine....beautiful.... hope he wins.

[TLBSHOW]

Was the girl kicked off tonight?

[Pokey78]

Won't know who goes until tomorrow.

[hayseed]

Their phones are screwed up. I was talking to my neighbor tonight and his cell phone rang. He said "watch this". He then answered his phone "American Idol, who ya voting for." He said he gets probably fifty calls a night every night the show is on since it started. I told him he should send a bill for his airtime.

[Texas Eagle]

The show was on during an NBA playoff game?

Uh-oh. That's not a good thing for Reuben or Kimberly. And then you add the fact that the number of white youngsters who own cell phones vastly outnumber the number of blacks.

Bye-bye Reuben or Kimberly.

[discostu]

I don't know about controlling which gets through but one thing I know for sure: if you're getting trunk busy when hitting the 1 it's 100% a problem with your providor, it hasn't gotten anywhere near Fox yet. Truthfully why would Fox need to rig the phone lines, nobody knows the numbers but them anyway, if they wanted to make numbers up nobody could stop them or prove them wrong.

[JimVT]

How can the voting be tabulated fairly if people in the home city of Clay Aiken can't even cast their votes??

Being the old fart that I am, I don't watch crap like this but I wonder......How can the voting be fair if everybody votes for the hometown favorite?

[Blueflag]

I used to work for an RBOC and an IXC (BIG phone companies). I'm a Reuben fan, so I had BellSouth and Nortel rig the SS7 system software so any Clay fans couldn't get past 1+.

If you guys couldn't get past 1+, then blame your long distance carrier. The switch starts routing the call as soon as you start dialing. You got to 1+, the software read your pic for long distance, attempted to route the call header and oops(!) no capacity.

Didn't have AT&T did you?

[sharktrager]

That is what happens when calls overload the system.

[discostu]

Not every hometown has a contestant.

It's a pretty fun show from an old fart perspective, you get to make fun of the girls dressed like ho's, and every now and then there are some real gems. The last two male contestants this year have excellent voices, of course all that talent is going to be wasted on synthetic pop music, but such is life.

[writmeister]

Down here in North Texas, every time I have tried Clay's line, it has been busy. OTOH, I am primarily voting fot Kim.