Dancing with the Stars Voting Issues and Rigging the Results

My twitter accounts (@tvblog and @puredwts) are getting flooded with people that are angry at the issues they had with voting for the final 3 couples on Dancing with the Stars last night. It seems like the voting issues were better this morning, but people are still upset. This same sentiment has poured over into the comments for this site and even many to my email account. Here’s a sample from an email I got:

Hi John. What is going on?

Last night I could not sign in to vote, just kept getting: ‘Ooops! There is a problem. Try again’. I spent well over an hour trying to sign in to vote, with no success. I have been voting for nine seasons, and never had any problem before. My neighbour also could not vote. Same message, and reading the comments and blogs it seems we were not alone. This is not fair. I do not want to believe all the nonsence about the ‘tea party’ swamping the voting, but if Bristol wins tonight, there is going to be a lot more speculation that this season was rigged.

Here’s my reply to that email which I think is worth sharing here on Pure DWTS:

It’s hard to say what was going on. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen ABC address it anywhere. No doubt there were some major issues last night.

My consolation is that the voting was bad for supporters for all the couples. So, I don’t think that will have as big of an impact on the voting as one might think.

Certainly some are saying that it’s the Tea Party overwhelming the phones and website. I guess that’s a possibility, but I think you could just as easily make the argument that it’s the Jennifer and Kyle fans and the anti-tea party people that are doing the overwhelming response. The results tonight will likely show this.

Many will continue to speculate that it’s rigged. I just don’t see any reason the show would rig it. I think the producers will be fine with any outcome. Think about it from the producers perspective:
Jennifer Wins – All will be right in the universe since the best dancer won (or something like that). The producers will be happy that the DWTS purists are happy the dancer won.
Bristol Wins – They get to tell the story that Anyone has a chance to win the show, not just the dancers (which is the common complaint). Plus, they can tell the whole “growth” story.
Kyle Wins – I haven’t seen anyone predicting this. That’s what would make the producers so happy. If Kyle wins EVERYONE will be shocked (probably even the Kyle and Lacey fans).

Basically, the producers are in a great position where they will be able to tell a great story no matter what happens. So, why would they spend any time rigging the DWTS results? Not to mention there are major legal issues if they are doing something to rig DWTS.

Go and check out Heidi and Courtney’s in depth analysis of the possible DWTS season 11 winner results. If you care about DWTS at all, then you’ll find their thoughts very interesting.

DISCLAIMER: Pure DWTS is just a DWTS Fan site and has no connection implied or otherwise to ABC, Dancing with the Stars, etc etc etc.