With Round 2 coming to a close, you probably noticed that a couple of the battles had a lot more votes than the others, or maybe you heard rumors of vote stuffing and cheating going on. So did we. So, we've undertaken an exhaustive analysis of the voting in Round 2, and we've found that two of the battles were definitely impacted by people stuffing votes.

　　During a quick check of the results, we found some very strange voting patterns, like a thousand people supposedly from the country of China voting overwhelmingly for Albert Einstein and Moogle, with their IP addresses in numerical order. Obviously, this didn't sit well with us, so we compared the results against several lists of open proxy servers and found an orchestrated attempt to stuff votes through those proxy servers. This could have easily been accomplished by just one or two dedicated people, which obviously goes against the spirit of the contest. While we accept (and encourage) users to rally others to their cause, a single person stuffing votes through proxy servers is not something we allow, and it's something we have measures in place to detect.

　　Based on our investigation, we are removing 1,922 proxy server votes from Moogle, which will change the outcome of the battle to Cortana's favor. We are also removing 1,451 proxy server votes from Albert Einstein, which is not enough to give Yoshi the victory because there was a huge rally for Al, and even after throwing out all of the stuffed votes, he'll still manage to make it to Round 3.

　　You can take a look at our raw vote tallies below, taken around 45 minutes before the end of voting. While there are always a few votes from proxies in every battle (because not every IP address we identify as a proxy is someone actually trying to stuff votes), the huge numbers of them in battles 35 and 40 make it clear what happened here.

　　Battle 33: Tails vs. Lucca

　　Proxy Votes: 50 versus 58

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 19,510 versus 13,547

　　Battle 34: Dominic Santiago vs. Chocobo

　　Proxy Votes: 39 versus 54

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 21,805 versus 16,216

　　Battle 35: Cortana vs. Moogle

　　Proxy Votes: 45 versus 1,967

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 17,821 versus 16,296

　　Battle 36: Launchpad McQuack vs. Zero

　　Proxy Votes: 280 versus 31

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 19,008 versus 16,112

　　Battle 37: Garrus Vakarian vs. Minsc

　　Proxy Votes: 48 versus 51

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 20,577 versus 10,800

　　Battle 38: Sully vs. HK-47

　　Proxy Votes: 38 versus 40

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 11,104 versus 18,079

　　Battle 39: Clank vs. Elika

　　Proxy Votes: 38 versus 27

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 18,351 versus 9,422

　　Battle 40: Albert Einstein vs. Yoshi

　　Proxy Votes: 1,490 versus 39

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 20,755 versus 20,298

　　Battle 41: Luigi vs. Murray

　　Proxy Votes: 42 versus 50

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 21,472 versus 10,628

　　Battle 42: Dogmeat vs. Agro

　　Proxy Votes: 41 versus 37

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 19,741 versus 13,400

　　Battle 43: Daxter vs. Toad

　　Proxy Votes: 28 versus 37

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 14,929 versus 13,637

　　Battle 44: Midna vs. Alyx Vance

　　Proxy Votes: 20 versus 42

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 11,568 versus 17,109

　　Battle 45: Companion Cube vs. Rush

　　Proxy Votes: 31 versus 50

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 18,525 versus 11,948

　　Battle 46: Epona vs. Navi

　　Proxy Votes: 30 versus 19

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 16,578 versus 10,933

　　Battle 47: Diddy Kong vs. Vivi

　　Proxy Votes: 33 versus 43

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 13,859 versus 14,072

　　Battle 48: Frog vs. Otacon

　　Proxy Votes: 24 versus 39

　　Non-Proxy Votes: 11,179 versus 16,452