Hi, folks.

Several of you contacted us about the last YouTube contest. You expressed concern that Cassie had posted links to third-party sites asking for folks to vote for her. To be totally fair to Cassie, soliciting votes on other sites is not cheating.

Nowhere in the rules or conditions of entry do we ban soliciting votes. In fact, we want people to spread the word about our contests to their friends and family so they can get involved and support their loved one.

That said, do we want contestants soliciting votes on vote-trading websites? Not really. Do we want you, our voting members, to feel like your vote is being drowned out by the votes of people who don’t really really care about our contest or contestants? Absolutely not.

So, for future contests, we will add a clause in the conditions saying you may not solicit votes on vote-trading sites or in any way offer to trade votes or reward people for voting for you. If it’s found that any contestant has done so, we reserve the right to award the prize to the runner-up. If contestants want to solicit votes on their Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc., that’s totally fine. They just can’t offer an incentive for votes.

Again, we want to re-iterate, as far as we know Cassie has not done anything to violate our conditions of entry and therefore has won our contest fairly. Congratulations to Cassie and big thanks to Diandra, Amanda and all of you, our awesome members, for voting and providing feedback.

Elizabeth