Ken Turetzky has questions about the Red Peters Sirius Radio Year End Countdown contest

Thanks to all who supported Her Shit Don't Stink in the mercifully concluded Red Peters Comedy Music Show Song of the Year voting for Sirius Radio.

Unfortunately, most of your votes were wasted, because in a scenario reminiscent of the last two presidential elections, somebody hacked the vote.

Lacking hard evidence, we're unable to directly accuse one perpetrator. But voters and contestants responded with outrage as hope slipped away for their favorite profane melodies.

I promoted the vote heavily through this site, my mailing list, media outlets and guest spots on popular podcasts. The contest featured the Top 16 songs, as chosen by Red Peters Show listeners on the Sirius Radio Howard Stern/Howard 101 Channel.

Accordingly, Her Shit Don't Stink blasted off to an early lead and was soon embroiled in a battle for the top spot with The Clamsmen's The Muff Hair Song.

Who's driving this thing?

And then something curious happened. The poll, administered for Sirius by a third party called webpasties.com, locked down. And when it resumed shortly afterward, only one song seemed to be collecting votes. Within days, that one song secured an insurmountable lead.

Finally, when votes once again began to register for the 13 songs that still hovered near zero percent, Muff Hair and Her Shit Don't Stink (still running 2-3 in the vote) remained supressed, and we could only watch as our percentages continued to shrink.

Red Peters Ol' Blue Balls Is BackResponse to previous Red Peters polls indicated listeners would cast hundreds of thousands of votes in the Top 16 poll, which ran from December 27 to January 10. Red invited visitors to sirius.com/howard101 to vote as many times as they wished and said he would announce the winner during the Season 2 premiere of his show on January 26.

Calling Red Peters

Some of you contacted Red early on, politely asking why your votes were not being counted. As the days passed, the tone grew angrier. "I know, bro! Like any other contest it's rigged!" one contestant, whose total vote never approached 2 percent, told me.

L.A. musician Mad Dog (aka The Clamsmen) gave up in frustration, finally asking his his mailing list subscribers to cease participation in the contest:

After nearly a week of the vote counter not working AT ALL, it suddenly started back up this morning and, despite many of us voting hundreds and thousands of times, my score has dropped steadily at the rate of 1% point an hour EXACTLY, never rising, only going down, down, down. It almost seems like my votes are going to the other guy!

And my former bandmate Brandon Higgins, after a beer-fueled night of fruitless attempted ballot-stuffing for Her Shit Don't Stink, dashed off an angry note to Red and declared, "If they let everybody else cheat and they don't let you cheat, hell, that's cheatin'!"

You may ask, why participate in a meaningless online vote, reluctantly sponsored by an indifferent satellite radio network, advertised as "intended for entertainment and amusement purposes only" and all-too-predictably resulting in the same old tsuris?

Are you asking? Because I'm asking.