I feel like a horrible “pageant Mother” but this really got under my skin. Star Tribune made the mistake of showing vote counts in Nika’s "Cutest Canine" round.

Five dogs had a silly number of votes. While you want to believe they just had big support or were simply *that* cute, they weren’t. To vote, you must log in and are limited to one vote per hour in a 23 hour round. It's not humanly possible to have a single voter every minute.

Isn’t it suspicious when 5 entries have over 1000 votes when the next closest is 75? Even after several independent inquiries were sent and responded to by contest support, these 5 cheating dog owners still make the Top 5. It doesn’t bother me one bit that Nika didn’t make it, but it pains me that they did! Boo!

Somehow I feel better for making a tactful but direct comment on the contest link on their Facebook page. I also feel ridiculous for letting this irk me so much.