Oprah rigs votes against Zach Anner - Oprah's Next TV star contest voting (VIDEO)

The reason I and many others suspect foul play in this contest is that Phyllis received about 600,000 votes within an hour this morning. Every time you refreshed the page, she'd have 20,000 more votes every minute -- while Zach's votes were actually going *down*. Accumulating votes at that rate is impossible without rigging or cheating the system.

If Zach got first place in the votes, and then Oprah chose Phyllis, she'd be accused of "hating the disabled." But if Zach is in second place, Oprah can just say, "I chose the person with the most votes!" It's a devious ploy.

There's also the possibility the website was either updating vote totals slowly or she really got a lot of votes this morning. Maybe she was on a local news program or in the paper. There's plenty of "other explanations" besides just claiming Oprah is evil! LOL

"LOL"? This is a question of an amazing young man's dream being crushed out because producers don't want to deal with his disabilities, and all you can say is "LOL"? This is so far from being funny that I can't even believe you'd be that flippant about it.

I certainly don't think Oprah herself is "evil," but I guarantee you that she and her peons would rather not have to explain away Zach's being passed over.

I said more than "LOL"... I understand that it's an important issue to you, but there's no need to get angry over it. It's a website with a voting database. Write to the people in charge of the website and issue your complaints with them.

MAYBE IT'S YOU THAT HAS SUCH A PREJUDICE OVER THE HANDICAPPED

Well you wouldnt know about the rigging because you arent participating, in ONE night this phyllis lady comes out of NOWHERE and its just ridicoulous, at ebaums we have discovered that if we vote 1 time it counts as 10 votes on her page.. just have the vote standings up and keep refreshing it.. you will see oprah is manipulating the votes.

Thanks for your opinion Dub...

few questions:

1 - how do you know it's Oprah manipulating it?
2 - have you heard of online websites being hacked before?
3 - maybe the top vote-getter really is getting a lot of votes!

There are WAY too many people voting for zach, he was up by 2million in first place and someone was in second at like 800k, then OUT OF NOWHERE he is second with 3 million and phylis in first with 4 million, everytime we vote for zach her votes will go up and zachs stay the same or decay.. its just UNBELIVABLE.. now do we know oprah is doing it? no. Can someone hack a website like that to manipulate the vots? doubtful, they'd be in jail. Phylis's show sounds like everything else on the cable network.. its insane. But there is for sure vote manipulation going on.. no question.

The speed at which Phyllis's votes are accumulating (30,000 a minute) makes it pretty clear that it's not happening legitimately. While it's obviously not Oprah herself doing it, there's almost certainly someone behind the curtain pulling strings to make this happen.

With regards to websites getting hacked... 4chan, the main website that does that sort of thing, is behind Zach 100%; you'd never see the internet or Anon hacking in favor of Dr. Phyllis.

Again, it's politically expedient for the people running the contest to knock Zach to second place. It keeps them from having to deal with difficult questions and accusations later, and I think they didn't expect anyone to notice. Too bad for them that we did. Anon is legion. Anon sees all.

Zach, it this really you? don't worry, you've got my vote. You can claim down now

Yea, while I was asleep last night she received over 1 million votes.

Hey Tom Hanks, thanks for stopping by! :)

You're right Matt Clark, she just might be really popular because she is indeed getting a lot of votes....

It concerns me that Phyllis is getting a lot of votes in a matter of seconds and I hope that it is due to tallying and not cheating....

Here's to Zach.. I'm rooting for him

Along with what everyone else has stated, Zach's view count has actually been going down (which points to tampering of some kind from whoever's running the website) and if you look at the way the website is coded, the vote button for this Dr. Phyllis is coded differently than the vote buttons for everyone else. The assumption seems to be that whoever's running the website made it so that a vote for Dr. Phyllis is actually giving her multiple votes (a lot of people are claiming that it's 10 votes for every real vote).

The coding is different, you're right. This should be investigated and any votes that Dr. Phyllis has received during the duration of the script difference should be divided by ten.

Everyone deserves a fair contest.

Jesse, you're right, it is an assumption. There's plenty of explanations available for why the votes are moving the way they are beyond "tampering" or "manipulation". Let's see how things unfold, since the contest is still continuing. I don't think a celebrity like Oprah would intentionally throw a contest to screw over a disabled person, it would damage her career going forward.

Matt, the producers (and Oprah) would definitely throw the contest as long as they thought no one would notice. They certainly didn't expect Anon. What they did expect is people like you and the rest of the media jumping to their defense. Way to excuse inexcusable behavior, man.

I really really doubt Oprah is behind this, as Wendy mentioned in an earlier comment, it seems more like a group of television execs just don't want to risk putting a disabled individual in the spotlight, and instead want to go with a "safe" show, which normally I wouldn't care about, but when they decided to make it a public vote which it seems like they're rigging...well I can't agree with that.

Also, yes, there are plenty of explanations for how the votes are moving, but that doesn't explain why the website's coding is the way it is (which to me is the main point of suspicion).

This is pathetic, Oprah or her Company should be prosecuted for discrimination against a disabled person. I will not watch her show again.

The voting hasn't even ended yet...

I can see why they're doing it -- think about how awkward it would be for them to replace Oprah with a guy with cerebral palsy in a wheelchair, no matter how awesome and funny he is. So they choose the Oprah clone. It's evil, but it's not surprising.

We realize the voting hasn't ended yet, which is why we're trying to bring attention to it while there's still time to make a difference and while the evidence is still there. Get the word out now instead of later when Oprah and the TV execs can just claim "well, they're just disappointed that they lost, there's no evidence that the vote was rigged".

You're spot on, Jesse. If Phyllis is getting the votes legitimately (which I seriously doubt), where's the harm in investigating?

GEEZE, crazy much?

By the way, here's some proof that Zach Anner's vote counts have been going *down* while Phyllis's have been skyrocketing (at an impossible rate of about 150 votes *per second*): http://imgur.com/rAPcN.jpg

Hopefully John Mayer (one of Zach's biggest fans and supporters) will have something to say about this that will get the media to sit up and pay attention.