In an interview prior to the start of the fifth season of American Idol, Executive Producer Nigel Lythgoe revealed for the first time that Clay Aiken had led the fan voting every week from the Wild Card week onward until the finale, when the possibly-random voting result gave Ruben Studdard the win. Of course, the truth will probably never be known and Clay went on to have a great career but that is besides the point.

During season four, several major voting errors were reported and confirmed. The first resulted in the first-ever re-vote in American Idol history. Mikalah Gordon was eliminated during “Billboard #1 Hits” week when the show mixed up the voting numbers for three of the Top 11 contestants, Anwar Robinson, Jessica Sierra and Gordon herself (FYI – I think Mikalah needed to go anyway). As if that wasn’t bad enough THE MISTAKE HAPPENED AGAIN!!!! After Anthony Fedorov’s second performance, the phone numbers displayed in the closed captioning were incorrect. As visible in the image above, the first two numbers that appeared were 1-866-IDOLS-01 and 1-866-436-5701, and the last number was Text Vote 5704. The “01″ number is actually for Carrie Underwood! Two more contestants were victims that night…

As was the case with Anthony’s number, Bo Bice and Vonzell Solomon’s phone numbers were incorrectly listed as 1-866-IDOLS-01 and 1-866-436-5701, which, again, was the number for Carrie Underwood!!! Carrie is a great artist and this is nothing against her – I’m just relaying facts.

One contestant, Frenchie Davis, was disqualified and removed from the competition after topless photos of her surfaced on the Internet. She later appeared in the Broadway musical Rent. Antonella Barba did not suffer the same fate.

According to the Howard 100 News, LaKisha Jones’ departure was not because of America’s vote, but rather a predetermined outcome. Their source claims that travel arrangements for LaKisha to return home were made prior to the start of the May 8, 2007 performance show, well before the phone lines were opened. The source also claims that a significant sized crew was sent to Flint, Michigan for reaction shots, however crews were not sent to the remaining contestants’ home towns.

Since the 2004 season, American Idol producers have battled online community services such as the weblogs DialIdol.com, Worldsentiment.com, and VotefortheWorst.com. DialIdol predicts the winner of each week’s contest based on how often an automatic dialer encounters a busy signal for each contestant; Worldsentiment uses very large samplings and algorithms to predict the outcome of the vote-off; and VotefortheWorst exhorts viewers to vote for what the site deems to be the worst contestant, rather than the best. Some in the media have implied that Las Vegas odds makers exert behind-the-scenes influence in protecting the services.

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