An Arkansas television station has retracted its hard-to-believe Wednesday night report that the state -- the home state of newly-crowned American Idol winner Kris Allen -- had cast "about 38 million" of the home viewer votes that were cast after American Idol's final performance show on Tuesday night.
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"AT&T is denying that 38 million votes came in from Arkansas," Fox's KLRT-TV affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas reported in an revised report late Thursday morning. "They are not sure where that number originated from."
The revised report did not offer any clarification about where the station's own information that AT&T had released the figure had originated from. KLRT-TV's initial report had implied it had obtained the figure directly from AT&T and had not cited any other media outlet as the source of its information.
"AT&T says about 38 million American Idol votes came from Arkansas last night," the initial report stated.
Wednesday night's American Idol's finale announced that "just under 100 million" votes were cast after Allen and fellow finalist Adam Lambert had performed on Tuesday night's final performance show -- which would mean that Allen's home state would have somehow managed to cast an astounding 38% of the nationwide vote total if KLRT-TV's initial report had been correct.
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The figure seemed even more implausible given Arkansas only has a population of 2.86 million, which would have meant its residents had somehow managed to cast an average of more than 13 votes for every man, woman and child living in the state.
About The Author: Steven Rogers