Who Picks Teen Choice Awards Winners? 2017 Voting Rules After ‘Rigged’ Concerns

The Teen Choice Awards will announce its winners on Fox Sunday night, but there is a possibility the lucky recipients may not have all been chosen by the fans as advertised. At least, that’s a concern viewers have had since the 2014 fiasco.

The drama started when choice viner winner Cameron Dallas exposed the show three years ago, tweeting he was notified of his win days before public voting for the category ended. “It’s funny how they told me I won the Viner award 6 days before the voting ended and made the runners up still tweet to vote for them,” the web celebrity wrote at the time.

Fellow nominee Matthew Espinosa also weighed in on the controversy, posting to his Twitter account that the show “picked” the winner almost a week prior to the ceremony and “used” the other nominees for promotional purposes, according to The Washington Post.

The tweets caused a firestorm among fans of the now defunct Vine and a disclaimer that aired at the end of the award show only added more fuel to the fire. After the 2014 program ended, one viewer caught a screenshot of a disclaimer that stated the show’s production company, Teenasaurus Rox Inc., “had the right to determine the winners from the top four vote-getters of the nominees in each of 88 categories” and that the “ultimate choice was determined solely by the producers.”

The disclaimer also stated that winners were determined through votes on the Teen Choice website and were electronically tabulated.

Speculation that show was rigged continued continued in 2016 when “Teen Wolf” star Shelley Hennig won for choice summer TV actress and joked onstage during her acceptance speech that her win was “rigged” by her co-star Tyler Posey. While many thought the comments from the actors were mere quips, it didn’t help the rumor mill about the show possibly being fake.

So, how does it actually work? Is the show really rigged? And who picks the winners?

As always, fans can vote for the TCA winners each year. While voting for the main categories for the 2017 show ended several weeks ago, viewers were able to cast their ballots online using their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The only stipulations were that voters must not be employed or related to a member of three companies responsible of the show, that they must live in the U.S., District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands and be at least 13 years old. There was also a limit of 10 votes per day and per category for each user ID.

As for the official winner-picking process, the award show site states: “Votes are tabulated electronically and winners are determined based on the nominees in each category with the highest number of eligible votes.”

The site does note, however, that tweets used as votes may be deemed ineligible if they include sexually explicit, violent, discriminatory or obscene content. Votes that contain messages that are “illegal,” and allude to underage drinking, substance abuse and/or hacking are also void. Offensive and “profane” votes or those that include three-party trademark, slogans or logos are at the discrection of producers to be considered ineligible.

Fox’s liability limitations states they’re not responsible for any “lost, late, misdirected, incomplete or non-delivered votes.” The official rules also warn against abusing the voting process, such as using programmed methods, stating, “Persons who tamper with or abuse any aspect of this voting process, as solely determined by Fox and/or Telescope, may be disqualified and applicable votes voided.”

“Any use of robotic, automatic, macro, programmed, third party or like voting methods will void all such votes garnered by such methods, and disqualify any voter/e-mail address using such methods. In addition, Fox and/or Telescope reserves the right to disallow votes when, in its good faith judgment, such action is required to ensure fairness or for any other legitimate reason.”

A rep for the Teen Choice Awards did not return International Business Times’ request for comment about this year’s winner selection process.

Tune in to the Teen Choice Awards on Sunday at 8 p.m. EDT on Fox to find out who walks away with a win and if there will be another show-shopping, post-show disclaimer.