by Lynette Alice

Created on: June 25, 2010

For all the wonderful things Oprah Winfrey has done and likely will do, something she is connected to lately has been bothering people. Oprah is in the process of launching the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) and has been lining up talent from several different industries to host shows on her network. For one show, the host was to come from a contest based on who won the popular vote of regular folks. It was open to anyone that wanted to submit a taped audition. One of the favorites - actually the favorite heading into the final homestretch was a man name Zach Anner.

Zach Anner is from Texas, he is a funny guy that has gained a ton of popularity from his video audition, and he also happens to live with the condition Cerebral Palsy. Zach wanted to host a humorous travel show on OWN that would provide viewers with travel tips and destination guides that would appeal to all people whether they be single, have a family, be disabled, or fall into any type of demographic. It all seemed like a winning formula.

The problem is allegedly that Oprah did not want Zach to win for whatever reason. One belief is that Oprah wanted an African American, preferably an African American woman to win the contest. Another was that Oprah did not want a person living with physical challenges winning. There were a few far more distasteful theories, and even another that rolled all of those scenarios up into one “neat” but ugly package. No matter what anyone wants to theorize, something weird did happen with the voting process.

Within a matter of 20 minutes, an African American woman, Dr. Phyllis as she calls herself, that wants to host a teacher reality show (?) suddenly amassed 300,000 votes. Within an hour she pulled in 600,00 new votes. The numbers were so huge compared to anything or anyone had done in the contest that everyone tracking the contest took notice. Some thought nothing more than wow, that woman is kicking butt, while others looked for an answer as to how it happened.

In looking for answer, something that was discovered is that the vote button for Dr. Phyllis wound up being different from the other contestants. What is alleged is that the coding gave Phyllis two votes every time Zach got one vote during this time period. It sounds too incredibly fantastical, and in actuality the total Phyllis received was not double what Zach received, it was more like something in the range of 1.9:1 but still in the ballpark. This is being explained away by advocates of this theory

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