Did AT&T Help Kris Allen Win American Idol?

UPDATE: Fox and the American Idol producers released a joint statement saying, “(We) are absolutely certain that the results of this competition are fair, accurate and verified … Kris Allen is, without a doubt, the American Idol. We have an independent third-party monitoring procedure in place to ensure the integrity of the voting process. In no way did any individuals unfairly influence the outcome of the competition.“

One week ago today Kris Allen was unexpectedly crowned the winner of American Idol season 8. But how could this be? Wasn’t the shows runner-up, Adam Lambert, a lock to win?

With over 100 million votes cast, Allen was announed as the winner… but just how many of those votes were assisted by AT&T employees? Do you feel the American Idol results were tainted? Tell us. 

It seems that American Idol corporate sponsor, AT&T, may have assisted in the casting of extra votes for Allen and shattering the dreams of Lambert. (It should be noted that AT&T is the only service where you can vote via text message)

Literally thousands of fans are outraged by this development, a simple Twitter search for AT&T turns up the following…

In a statement issued yesterday, a spokesperson for AT&T said, “In Arkansas, we were invited to attend the local watch parties organized by the community. A few local employees brought a small number of demo phones with them and provided texting tutorials to those who were interested.“

The NYTimes stated that no such free texting services were extended to Adam Lambert supporters.

Perez Hilton, the self-proclaimed “Queen of all Media”, had the following to say about the texting tutorials, “The phone company even showed guests how to “power text”, which allows one to text 10 votes at the touch of a button and violates the show’s rules.“

Here is a snippet from the American Idol FAQ about power dialing / texting, “The producers reserve the right to remove any identified ‘power dialing’ votes. Note that this applies to both toll-free and Text Messaging votes…“

Now the question is… what are American Idol producers to do? Can they even do anything at this point?

Personally, I don’t watch American Idol… but even I knew who Adam Lambert was. He was just on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, where they all but handed him the key to EW city. As far as I knew he was the winner-in-waiting. So when I heard that some other guy had won, it seemed odd.

So, how do you feel about Idolgate? Tell us.