Oprah Rigging TV Show Contest against Handicapped?

Last week we posted a story about Zach Anner, a boy with cerebral palsy that entered a video into Oprah’s talk show contest for her new tv network. Anner was winning the contest by over a million votes for a solid week, and suddenly people noticed a glaring change with the voting system on her website. For several days, the number 2 contestant would be uplifted by 10,000-20,000 votes every few minutes, and votes for Anner wouldn’t increase, in fact, they would decrease.

Things went downhill fast, so fast that the contestant in 2nd place surpassed Anner by 300,000 votes in less than 20 minutes when they were at their closest.

Screen shots have been taken by various people across the internet:

…and even some charts have appeared:

chart with stats detailing a time period that the 2nd place contestant
was given 2 votes for every 1 that Anner would receive during regular intervals

Some people even went so far as to check the code of the page, and they noticed that the contestant in 2nd place was coded differently than everyone else during the time that the votes changed. (coding differences)

Comments left by Anner’s voters include:

• “Is this contest rigged? I just voted and so did a couple other people and his vote counter is stuck at the same number. The lady who jumped ahead is getting 10,000 every couple minutes. I wonder who is rigging it. Zach was winning for so long until they stopped counting his votes.”
• I’ve voted a few times, and it doesn’t seem to be counting… Its been stuck at the same number for a while now. Yet, the top video, Dr. Phyliss seems to be getting hoards of votes coming in. What is happening?
• I just voted and instead of the points going up they went down what is going on?
• my votes aren’t showing up either : ( but they do whenever i try voting on anyone elses
• My votes aren’t showing up… Plus 5 minutes ago, Zach had 3.8 million votes. And now it says 3.6 millions votes.
• Zach has all the charisma and charm needed to make an excellent host – not to mention the sexiest of palsies! I don’t know about this voting situation except for what I’ve seen with my two eyes, but all I’ve seen are Zach’s votes going DOWN while Dr. Phyllis’ votes shoot up at unprecedented rates – 500,000 in an hour or two!!! I hope this does not affect Zach’s chances, he seems like such a great guy…. go ZACH!
• Um! I have tried voting for Zach for the past 2 days and none of my votes have showed. Now Zach is number two in the most votes category… I really hope this computer glitch is fixed within the next day because if it is not…. it is going to look very suspicious. This guy deserves to win because he is so natural and entertaining in front of the camera.
• My computer was being slow so I refreshed and I couldnt help but notice that his points dropped by a few thousand. Anyone kno why the points keep dropping?
• “This contest is rigged! Every time someone posts about it being rigged it gets deleted! ZACH SHOULD BE WINNING. THIS IS RIGGED. THIS COMMENT WILL BE DELETED.”
• “I voted for Zach and he didn’t get one! WHY?! I think something is wrong with the voting system as my vote did not get counted! WE LOVE YOU ZACH!”

On the bright side, the top 5 contestants are the ones that move forward to be voted upon by Oprah herself, so Zach is still well positioned… at least, this week.

So is the contest really being rigged?  Longtime viewers of Oprah hope not and rely on the trust that she has built over many years, but the changes in the website code speaks louder than anything else.  Let’s hope it isn’t true.

Others wonder if the contest is even reliable because video entries are still coming in, yet they receive little attention compared to those that have been getting votes for a couple weeks.  How does one compete with someone that is already 5 million votes ahead of you?  Perhaps they should have received all the entries and then allowed people to vote.  Regardless, sorting through the (current) 5,573 video entries is to say, daunting at the very least.  If every video was two and a half minutes long like Zach’s, it would take 232 hours to sit through all of them.  Plus they are doing live auditions as well across the United States.

Despite the outcome, Anner and his mother remind everyone to remain positive like the true heroes they are.

Anner is a former University of Texas student and seasoned television host. He calls himself a “wheelchair-bound lady magnet.”  See his original video entry below.