Vote snafu on ‘Idol’ just human error

It’s “rubbish” to suggest there was a deliberate effort to tinker with “American Idol” by putting wrong voting information on-screen, a series producer says.

Fox’s talent contest, which viewers decide by casting phone or text-messaging votes, showed incorrect call-in numbers for three contestants at the end of Tuesday’s episode.

As a result, the episode was rerun on Wednesday with the correct information, and the voting results show that normally airs on Wednesday night moved to Thursday.

Mikalah Gordon, a 17-year-old Las Vegas resident, became the latest hopeful to bite the dust, bringing the contest down to 10 finalists.

Speculation by fans and analysts ranged from the theory that Fox was trying to discourage repeat “power voters” by making them vote twice, to the idea the network wanted to sell more ad time for the high-rated series.

“Why would we contaminate the honesty of one of the top-rated shows in America by fiddling with it?” executive producer Ken Warwick replied.

“It’s regrettable,” he added. “This was a human error and we had to address it as best we could,”

In previous seasons the program has been dogged by accusations of everything from racism to an anti-overweight bias skewing the outcome.