Illinois I expected to be our top rival... but... VERMONT...? WTF??
Now I'm more perplexed than irritated. I really do wonder where these votes came from. Did you know that Vermont got more votes than its actual population?
I have yet to hear any real explanation, except that they had a huge television, web, and email forward campaign. Their video hardly counts, because it was pretty stupid in my opinion, just like most of them (even ours was a bit hokey). I'm guessing a lot of people liked the idea of voting for the underdog, but that still doesn't explain it. In any case, if annoying email forwards are what it takes, I'm fine with the fact that we didn't win it.
However, I agree with Tom: if we weren't gonna win it anyway, I'm just glad Illinois didn't get it. I KNOW they placed second purely because of population. But it is pretty ridiculous that the movie is going to premiere in a 100-seat theater. Only a tiny fraction of Vermont Springfield's population is going to get to see it on opening night; the rest only get to stand outside and scream at celebrities for 15 minutes before the show and 15 minutes after it. That's how it was when Eugene got the premiere of Without Limits (another Prefontaine movie).