by Kim Remesch

Created on: April 25, 2009

Americans love a good controversy. Seriously, isn't that why we love Reality TV? Good (reality) TV thrives on controversy, and American Idol is no exception. In fact, it may be the standard in terms of voting controversies.

Controversy abounds on and off the set of Idol, mainly as it applies to voting. The controversies crop up time and again and for different reasons. Some are merely human error, while some are the things that fuel conspiracy theory nuts. The controversies cover acts of God, technology, nefarious behavior and human error, among others. Here are a few:

MOTHER NATURE

In Season Three, many Idol fans think Jennifer Hudson was robbed of the Idol title because Mother Nature stepped in and snatched it away from her. Bad weather had downed the phone lines in Chicago, Hudson's hometown. Her loved ones couldn't vote, and the votes would not be delayed.

TECHNOLOGY

It's not a case of one man, one vote on Idol. This covers a few categories: System overload, speed dialing, texting, system overload and hackers.

-System overload. If you are calling using your telephone, the law of physics (so to speak) dictates that only so many calls can be handled-the amount the system was set up to handle. So when it's a hotly-contested event, that system suffers overload.

In the second season's battle between Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, each of the two contestants had his own phone number, per American Idol policy. Host Ryan Seacrest reported that the winner gained less than 1 percent more votes than the other.

The controversy involves the one person, one vote concept. It just doesn't exist with American Idol. During season two a Pennsylvania voter claimed to have telephoned 500-600 times to vote for Clay Aiken. She said no matter how often she called, she couldn't place her vote. So she didn't even get the one call/one vote for all of her 500 plus times dialing. She wasn't alone. Given the margin of the win, those calls that wouldn't go through would have made a major difference.

-Speed dialing. This is the precursor to the above.
It's just common sense that if a person has to manually dial, while another can hit redial or speed dial, the odds are in favor of the person using technology getting through. This also leads to another problem. The people with speed dialing can jam the phone lines in a way that calls won't make it in. They don't have to be voting for someone, necessarily; they just have to keep calling to jam the lines so others' calls can't get through-and be counted.

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