‘The Voice’ Voting Scandal Tosses Out Votes

The Voice host Carson Daly revealed to fans of the NBC singing competition on Wednesday that some of their votes had to be tossed aside due to inconsistencies with text and online voting during the week. Phone votes for the week were the only ones that were counted.

Prior to announcing the Top 12, Daly and Telescope CEO Jason George delivered the news about the voting issues. "We value our relationship with our viewers and tonight, we’d like to be completely upfront with you, the fans, that along with Telescope, we noticed some inconsistencies on this week’s texting and online voting,” Daly said. “But, thanks to Telescope, the monitoring system we have in place worked.”

George said, “[Telescope] quickly identified the problem and (they) were able to kind of take steps moving forward to make sure it doesn’t reoccur.”

“For complete fairness, votes cast via text and online were not counted in the voting results,” Daly added. “Here’s the good news: Telescope certifies that removing those votes did not affect the outcome for any team.”

Telescope, who also manages votes for American Idol and The X-Factor, is tight-lipped about how their voting systems work, as are the networks and producers who employ them. There has been a fear that they might face lawsuits if the information was leaked, a source told the New York Daily News. The source also claimed that scandals like this one have occured with votes form Idol and X-Factor in the past.

“It’s like a black box,” the source said. “Outside of the network, producers and a handful of technology vendors no one has access.”