Mnet Cancels Millions Of Votes In 2017 MAMA Due To Voter Fraud

The ugly side of fandom recently reared its head in the 2017 Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA). On Nov 2, the Korean music channel Mnet revealed that its upcoming awards ceremony was a victim of voter fraud. Ever since polls opened on Oct 26, millions of votes turned out to be tied to illegally made accounts. Apparently, fans of K-pop groups, solo artists, dramas, and actors have been making fake accounts to bump up vote totals.

Mnet Takes Action

The annual MAMAs remain one of the biggest award ceremonies in Korea, drawing in voters from over 180 countries. Unfortunately, it has also led to rampant cheating. In response to the illegal voting, Mnet performed fraud inspections on all voting done in the 2017 MAMA. Voting for MAMA temporarily shut down on Nov 3 for a systems check-up.

The results revealed that ballot rigging affected almost all artists in all categories, some more than others. IU and Oh Hyuk, up for the ‘Best Collaboration’ category, lost the most votes as 3.34 million. Girls’ Generation followed with 3.32 million votes in the category ‘Best Dance Performance: Female Group.’ BTS also lost 1.02 million votes in the ‘Best Male Group’ category.

“As more than 180 countries around the world are joining 2017 MAMA online vote, we are trying our utmost to provide and keep the fair voting system [and] detect any illegal actions and block/prevent from any recurrences,” an Mnet representative told Billboard.

In the end, Mnet deleted millions of votes, blocked IP addresses, and even permanently deleted Member IDs. Many rankings shifted, as well. AllKpop posted a comparison of votes before and after Mnet took action, which can be seen below.

Voting resumes on November 28.