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Logie votes from overseas are faking Aussie addresses

Diehard fans have found a loophole in Logie voting, courtesy of the White Pages.

Diehard Australian TV fans who live overseas are voting for their favourites in the Logie Awards and side-stepping the entry rules to do it.

TV Week’s online voting is open to Australian residents once only and requires a name, address, phone and email.

But such is the determination of some fans living overseas they are turning to whitepages.com.au to fill in the fields and vote for their favourite stars. Through social media the loophole is being shared along with screenshots of “Thanks for Voting” replies.

Some are even using addresses of Aussie relatives to circumvent the rules.

The Logies have long been the subject of vote-rigging, harking back to the days when network publicists would spend afternoons filling out magazine coupons.

Since voting moved online stars with big social media followings have been able to push for results including Hamish Blake, Karl Stefanovic, Lee Lin Chin, Samuel Johnson and Grant Denyer -with a campaign from Tom Gleeson.

Entertainment reporter Peter Ford said, “There should be some attempt to geo-block things from certain parts of the world. I wouldn’t have thought it was that complicated to do, particularly with shows that do have international followings.

“You can’t go ringing people to verify so the only solution is to geo-block.”

A TV Week spokesperson told TV Tonight, “Roy Morgan manages the verification of all votes for the TV Week Logie Awards and collectively we are confident the system is fair to all candidates.

“A detailed verification process is in place that eliminates invalid votes from the final tallies. The data verification process is much more complex than Googling and entering an address. Attempts to circumvent the rules do form part of the verification process, though details of the process are not made public.”

17 Responses

  1. Neighbours stars were promoting this last week through their Instagram Stories… Most all said search for an Australian Postcode. April was really one of the few that actually promoted national city postcodes. Meanwhile, unlike most Australian dramas, Neighbours has 3 LGBTI characters currently starring. And Matt and Aaron’s wedding.

  2. So if Neighbours gets any nominations we’ll know it’s because of overseas votes. It would be a shame to see quality dramas beaten by Neighbours.

      1. I wouldn’t call Home & Away quality drama either. I don’t think I’ve seen it nominated for most popular drama for quite a few years. If Neighbours was nominated fairly by viewers in Australia, then good luck to it, but not fair for people to be breaking the rules.

        1. Well Home & Away has been nominated for numerous years and all recently too. You can see here:

          en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations_received_by_Home_and_Away#Logie_Awards

          As much as I sigh at it, it is never much of a surprise as TV Week is like some sort of official Home & Away magazine these days constantly giving it covers.

  3. Part of me is all for this if it gives neighbours a boost. It’s much underrated in this country and as a whole a much better soap than bogan away.

  4. I managed to vote from overseas. It was rather easy. Just used my old Australian address and old (and no longer connected) mobile number.

    All they really needed to do was geoblock the website if they didn’t want overseas votes

  5. If a major market research organisation for whatever reason is not able to fulfill concerns about vote rigging by being transparent and making details about the verification process public, then there can be consideration for an independent audit of the process to ensure public confidence.

  6. A Neighbours fan group that I am in was encouraging overseas fans to use fake addresses to vote for the Neighbours stars. A lot of Aussie shows are aired internationally so of course there will be overseas fans trying to vote.

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