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Zach Anner’s loss of Oprah contest lead sparks controversy
Zach Anner, the clear front-runner for the past week in media mogul Oprah Winfrey’s contest to give away a talk show to the winner of a reality television contest, was surpassed Tuesday by a contestant named Dr. Phyllis. Anner now trails the frontrunner by more than 800,000 votes.
The flip flop has resulted in a viral trend of rumors and accusations that the contest has somehow been rigged. The Huffington Post, among other Internet sites, is reporting that Dr. Phyllis’ vote total jumped by more than 300,000 of those votes in an unlikely 20 minutes Tuesday. Commenters on other Internet sites have claimed that after voting for Anner they actually saw his vote total go down.
It’s highly unlikely that any real shenanigans are going on to prevent Anner’s votes from being tallied, but it is certainly possibly that other contestants have organized efforts or employed questionable methods to make their vote totals rise dramatically.
Sadly, Anner’s drop to second place seems to have brought out the worst in many online denizens, who are using insulting racial epithets as a means to voice their displeasure. It’s hard to believe that the self-described “wheelchair-bound lady magnet” Anner would support that.
While contest rules state that producers are only obligated to choose “one online favorite from the top five online submissions” for the televised competition, there’s no reason they couldn’t choose more. And they’re not even obligated to choose the top vote getter.
With the amount of publicity Anner has received, there’s no way he won’t be a part of that competition. But if you want to make sure that Anner gets in, the best way isn’t to tear down Winfrey or Anner’s competitors — it’s to watch his video and vote for him.
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