ArtPrize text vote questions remain

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - ArtPrize officials acknowledged Wednesday afternoon they knew there was a problem with text voting on the first day of the event, but didn't make a big deal about it because they figured other carriers besides AT&T would come online soon.

At a mid-afternoon press conference to address the questions surrounding the text voting problems, ArtPrize officials laid the blame at the feet of Celltrust, a third party vendor with whom they contracted to manage the text voting.

The issue came to light this week. However, online voting was not affected at all.

When some AT& T users vote for an ArtPrize piece by text and then check out their voting history on the ArtPrize website , it looks like they're voting twice for the same piece.

But ArtPrize officials told 24 Hour News 8 that even though it looks like someone may have voted twice for the same piece, only one of the votes counts.

Officials with ArtPrize said they don't know how the text voting problem happened, or even exactly what. However, they decided not to extend the initial phase of the voting deadline past midnight because they've already received more votes this year than all of last year, and feel there is enough of votes to move ahead.

But Sprint officials told 24 Hour News 8 they were not alerted to any problems with the voting set-up until this past Monday.

Visitors can vote for as many different pieces as they want during this phase of voting, but can only vote once for each piece.

The ArtPrize Top 10 will be announced at 6 p.m. Thursday. Voters during the next phase of the competition can only vote once for only one piece.