Chapter 107: Chapter 107: Public Voting Details

The Jiang Fans were the first to refute these accusations!

They knew what they had done.

Campaigning for votes offline was perfectly legal. The friends, family, and fans of nearly every composer did it.

So it didn’t count as cheating.

The cheating Karl accused her of was vote padding—illegally using other people’s citizen IDs to cast votes, like a virus.

There were also some inactive accounts.

For example, accounts whose owners had passed away, or ones that had been inactive for a long time.

Votes like these were considered fraudulent.

Just to be safe, Wen Jiaqi went through the fan groups and asked, “No one did anything against the rules, right?”

“Of course not! That would just attract hate for Qin Bao, wouldn’t it?”

“We don’t need to do anything illegal. Besides, Qin Bao is plenty talented. Most of the votes from the Federation will go to her anyway.”

“So we’re all sure no one did anything? @everyone”

In every group, people came out to reply, one after another.

After confirming that no one had done something so foolish, Wen Jiaqi said, “Since that’s the case, let’s just vote for a public disclosure. We can prove Qin Bao’s innocence.”

“Uh… but what if a rival did it?”

It wasn’t that they were conspiracy theorists, but so many people were already jealous of Jiang Qin. What if one of them pulled a reverse operation?

For instance, they could hire people from the Dark Web to pad the votes, then hire an online mob to raise doubts.

If the votes were made public, wouldn’t that just confirm the vote padding allegations!

Wen Jiaqi hesitated as well.

’Surely not?’

“What do we do then? Should I contact someone at Tianwen Entertainment and have them investigate first?”

“You could ask. From the looks of it, Tianwen is very protective of Qin Bao.”

In fact, Lan Yuyan didn’t need anyone to remind him; he had already sent people to investigate.

Because if the votes were proven to be fraudulent, regardless of who paid for them, Jiang Qin’s results would be nullified.

He had hired technicians before the voting even began to prevent anyone from padding the votes to frame her.

But to be absolutely certain, he once again had someone confirm it.

If there were people who could pad votes, then naturally there were people who could secretly audit them. Ordinary people might not have access to such individuals, but with the Lan Family’s background, it was quite easy.

He would absolutely not allow anyone to obstruct Jiang Qin, Tianwen, or the Federation at such a critical moment.

Soon, they replied with the results of the investigation.

Lan Yuyan breathed a sigh of relief and immediately contacted Qi Yu, who was currently in the Empire.

“Tell the production team we don’t need a vote on whether to disclose. We are willing to do it directly, but we demand that everyone’s votes be disclosed together.”

If they were going to prove their innocence, then everyone would do it together!

***

Soon, before the results of the online poll came in, the director announced the news and had only the ten contestants vote.

If the majority voted to disclose everything, then everything would be disclosed.

If the majority voted against it, the matter would no longer be questioned.

Without a doubt, all five composers from the Empire voted in favor.

Jiang Qin also voted yes, lest people say she had a guilty conscience.

If she was going to win, she would win fair and square.

If someone had indeed cast fraudulent votes for her to secure her win, then she would accept her results being invalidated.

Because that would mean without anyone cheating on her behalf, her original result would have been second place.

The other contestants also voted in favor.

For no other reason than to watch the drama unfold; it wasn’t like the fire would burn them anyway.

With ten votes in favor, the motion passed.

The production team displayed the prepared voting details on the large screen.

The doubters immediately began to scrutinize the data.

Empire—Main Star, IP address: Central Street ##, Ms. Gu, Light Brain Number 1xxx.

Empire—Main Star…

Federation—Blue Star…

Federation—Main Star…

…

Every single vote could be traced back to an IP address and a Light Brain Number.

Everyone also saw that many of the IPs came from the Star Network halls in the major cities of various planets.

These votes weren’t against the rules, so no one paid any mind to this group.

What struck Karl the hardest was that over one hundred million Imperial people had voted for Jiang Qin!

In other words, without this group of voters, Jiang Qin never would have taken first place!

This infuriated him. He shot up from his seat in the guest section and shouted at the camera, “What were those Imperial people who voted for her thinking? Do you want to be the Federation’s running dogs?”

“We’re here, pouring our hearts and souls into winning honor for the Empire, and you’re back there stabbing us in the back!!”

“This is treason! You are traitors to the Empire!!”

His incessant accusations stirred up a rebellious spirit in the Imperial people who, after seeing the voting details, had been feeling a little guilty.

“It’s just an entertainment show. Do you really need to escalate it to this level?”

“LMAO, why did I vote for Jiang Qin? Because her song is good. Yours, on the other hand… heh, they’re all garbage!”

“Instead of questioning others, why don’t you reflect on yourselves for a change?”

“I believe I have personal freedom. I can cast my own vote for the people and things I like.”

“International relations are something for the higher-ups to worry about. I’m just an ordinary citizen. What’s wrong with liking a song from the Federation? Did I break a law?”

…

Karl had no idea he had provoked public outrage. He was still lost in his anger.

The next moment, however, the host dropped a bombshell.

“After verification, it was found that only one of the ten contestants had irregularities in their vote count.

After discussion, the judges have decided to nullify Mr. Karl’s semifinal results, processing them as 0 points and 0 votes.”

The entire audience erupted in an uproar!!!

“What? Mr. Karl’s votes were fake?”

“My God, is this the pot calling the kettle black?”

“No way, right? Didn’t Mr. Karl always lead the other contestants by a huge margin in all the previous shows he was on?”

“Take a wild guess where those votes came from.”

“So you’re saying it’s very likely that the votes he got every time he was on a show were from cheating. It’s just that no one ever questioned it before, so nobody found out?”

It wasn’t just the audience who was shocked; even the guest performers and judges on the show found the result unbelievable.

Who would have thought? The very person who first accused others of vote padding was padding votes himself!

What was even more baffling was, didn’t Karl know his own votes were inflated? Why would he dare to agree to a public disclosure of everyone’s voting details?

Jiang Qin was also surprised.

’I didn’t expect this situation to take such an absurd turn.’

However, she suspected Karl probably really didn’t know, because the shock and devastation in his eyes didn’t seem like an act.

In fact, the reason was obvious if you thought about it for a moment.

It was true that the Imperial people were united in their voting, but the problem was that they were *too* united. This led to the composers participating in the same show all having roughly the same number of votes.

Under these circumstances, if you wanted to stand out, the only way was to pad your votes.

After all, they came from different companies. They weren’t really on the show for some damn Imperial honor.

They were here to make money, to create a cash cow!

You could tell just by looking at Karl. He had been promoted from a newcomer to his current status; who knows how much profit he had brought his company over the years.

Therefore, Jiang Qin guessed it was very likely that the company behind him had orchestrated this without his knowledge.

And because he was in the dark, he had been so confident.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep