Anonymous writes "Last year at MTV's Video Music Awards, Michelle Branch won the Viewer's Choice Award. This is an award that is determined by online voting. How was this artist with a small fan base able to rise above those with large fan bases? Autovoting systems. It seemed Michelle's fans were especially technically adept at having their computers vote for them automatically for thousands of votes. Messageboard bravodo boasted of the cheating, but there was never any evidence of involvement or encouragement by Michelle's representatives.... until now.
With MTV apparently cracking down recently on such cheating of their online voting systems, Michelle Branch hasn't been doing as well as she used to.. Last year she won the Viewer's Choice Award, this year she wasn't even recognized (nominations are determined by online voting). Last year she was a constant on the TRL countdown, and this year she isn't even a blip on the radar.
All this has the promotion department so concerned that one of Michelle Branch's official representative's (with the screen name mav) actually posted at her messageboard that "We need more individual autovoters, that do less votes a day. MTV probably throws our votes if more than 100-200 votes come from one person." You can see the post here.
This clearly puts a taint on Michelle's VMA award last year."
