Eager to make sense of such a shocking outcome, idol watchers began formulating theories on Adam’s loss; 1) Adam was penalized for being gay, 2) the vote was a backlash against the judges who brazenly anointed Adam the winner ahead of time and thus taking for granted the democratic  underpinnings of the show; 3) he was victim of that classic voting phenomenon in which a clear favorite actually loses a vote because voters believe everyone else will vote for him,; or 4) the votefortheworst.com people just made history.

But that is all just speculation. And even if those theories were true, it was still a fair outcome, since in each case, the final result would have been the preference of the voting public; American democracy at work. Only word of a cheating scandal could disturb the notion that Kris Allen won based on viewer choice, and of course that is exactly what happened.

Rogue Texting

Not long after the finale, reports trickled in that some Kris Allen viewing parties were attended by AT&T wireless employees. AT&T is a longtime sponsor of the show and its Arkansas employees were invited to several viewing parties for Allen. As news reports have detailed over the past week, these employees brought with them AT&T cell phones that were capable of “power texting,” which allows a user to send 10 texts at one time to one recipient. Only AT&T mobile customers can text in their votes for American Idol. 

According to the Arkansas Post-Democrat, these AT&T employees  had a total of 80 or 90 demo phones and helped interested partygoers use the power text feature. Noone knows how many power texts were received by Idol, but Fox executives assured the public that regardless of the amount of texts received from those viewing parties, they would not have affected the outcome, it simply was not that close.

In a statement released by AT&T, the power texting employees were simply “caught up in the enthusiasm of rooting for their hometown contestant.” Even the most liberal estimates of what kind of damage the rogue texters could have done to the voting fail to show that they could have had a meaningful effect on the voting. Even if they managed to power text half a million votes in the four hour window, that would have accounted for only half of one percent of the votes cast. This is true as long as Fox’s statements about how many votes there were and the wide win margin for Allen are true and factual.

Fox however,  will not release that information and instead assures fans and the media that the there is an “independent third party monitoring procedure in place to ensure the integrity of the voting process.” That third party is a private firm named Telescope Inc., and other than the general information it provides on its website, both Idol producers and Telescope employees remain mum on exactly what measures the show takes to safeguard against volume voting and other inequities.

U.K. based Telescope – with offices in L.A. and New York – was formed in 1998 and cut its teeth on the nascent interactive television market in 2002 managing the voting on Britain’s wildly popular Pop Idol show.  U.S. operations began in 2003 with American Idol, and the company now handles the voting for several reality mainstays such as “So You Think You Can Dance,” “America’s Got Talent,” and “Hell’s Kitchen.”  In an interview with the WWE concerning the company’s management of WWE’s Diva search contest, the head of operations for Telescope assured the public by insisting that “we bring experience and those important steps of validation to every project we do.”

What Would Woz Do?

Despite Telescope’s apparent experience and success, the lack of transparency is eating away at the press and public; and we all know from Watergate that sometimes it’s the cover-up that is the worst crime. The blogosphere is broiling with calls to Fox executives to release those finale vote totals and put the matter to rest.

There is an online petition circulating to do just that on one website. Indeed, if the Fox execs have nothing to hide, if the margin between Lambert and Allen was big enough to drive a stealth fighter through, than why not just pull up the curtains and shed daylight on the whole affair? If the recent affairs of legendary Apple Computer cofounder Steve Wozniak is instructive there be some reason NOT to release the information that everyone is salivating for.

As a finalist on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, “Woz” as CNet contributing writer Chris Matszczyk calls him, threw a public tantrum when he learned that he was in the bottom three after the votes were in last this past March. He went so far as to call the producers “liars” and accused them of fixing the vote totals to force a dance-off between him and his partner and Go Go girl Belinda Carlisle and her partner, all in an effort to boost the show’s ratings.

Recognizing Woz’s status as the father of the modern pc, network execs gave Woz a rare in-depth look at the show’s vote tabulation equipment and process, specifically how they detect fraud. After the tech founding father surveyed their operation, his public outrage turned into a public mea culpa, even calling himself a dishonest heel for his rants about vote counting.

 Woz explained that he examined all of the methods the show used to count votes, ensure accuracy, and detect fraud and they were in line with what he and other IT experts would do. His faith appeared to be instantly restored by whatever he saw. Interestingly, Woz also observed that he “can also see why the exact [vote] totals cannot be released” acknowledging that “ That would make it harder to detect fraud.” Food for thought.