The Cincinnati Enquirer has decided to re-do the round of voting for the “TV Anchor Dream Team” contest pairings that were hacked, this time with security measures in place to ensure the purity of the vote.
For those who haven’t been following the drama surrounding the local anchor popularity tournament, eight anchors ranked from one to eight were paired off against each other in four categories: male, female, sports and weather in NCAA style brackets. However, the first round of meteorologists and one sports anchor pairing was hacked by an Internet bot which supercharged the totals for some anchors. One pairing drew more than 105,000 votes in a little more than ten hour period.
The Enquirer’s John Kiesewetter told TVSpy the paper still doesn’t know who hacked the contest or why. Voters will now have to enter a security code for each vote they cast.
Autobots or Internet bots are software applications that can run automated tasks, such as online voting, over the internet at a rate faster than humans.
The pairings that will get the mulligan are: Randi Rico (WLWT) versus Tim Hedrick (WKRC) and Steve Horstmeyer (WXIX) versus John Gumm (WKRC) in the weather department and Zach Wells (WKRC) versus Ken Broo (WLWT) in sports.
Kiesewetter said the “Sweet 16” has been pushed back a week because of the auto bot voting. The Final Four will be shown on April 14.