Nickelodeon’s ‘Kids Pick the President’ contest bombarded by bots casting fake votes

Bots attacked Nickelodeon’s “Kids Pick the President,” blistering the informal poll with fake votes, the network says.

Nickelodeon says bots cast 130,000 votes in the unscientific online survey that asked children their choice between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. The network learned of the cheating and removed fraudulent votes.

Biden won the contest, held Oct. 20-26, with 53% of the approximately 90,000 votes.

“Though kids are not of an age to vote, ‘Kids Pick the President’ is a platform where their voices do count, and they deserve to be heard,” a statement says. “And just as kids value honesty and fairness, so do we at Nickelodeon. Therefore, out of respect for kids everywhere and in the spirit of civic responsibility, we present the name of the winner based on votes cast fairly and within our stated guidelines of one vote counted per household device.”

Nickelodeon says it learned about efforts in online forums to cheat in the survey and later detected 130,000 bot-generated votes.

NBC News reporter Ben Collins tweeted a screenshot of a 4chan forum where users discussed casting votes for Trump.

Nickelodeon did not release information about which candidate bots voted for in the survey.

Actress Keke Palmer revealed the results in a televised special Tuesday night. The program included basics about voting and children sharing about the issues they care about most in the election.

“By now, you probably noticed that a lot of adults around you keep talking about one thing: the 2020 presidential election. But it can get pretty confusing,” Palmer said at the beginning of the program, according to The Washington Post. “So we decided to break it all down and create a space where you can have a voice.”

Nickelodeon has held the contest since 1988. Before the 2020 survey, it correctly predicted the presidential winner in six out of the eight most recent elections. Hillary Clinton won the survey in 2016.

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