I do not think racism was involved, either. The big problem is in the way the voting's set up-it should be one vote per person. This whole thing of people being able to vote for two contestants, or one person being able to vote hundreds of times for their favorite, or things along that line, is ridiculous, because then it's not a fair representation of the vote. A person will stick around, not necessarily because they're good, but because one person voted over and over and over and over, and another person who was much better will leave because their fans only voted once...that's seriously messed up and unfair to the contestants.
And then of course there's other factors, too. I just talked to a girl at another board who said that the reason she was voting for John Stevens was because JPL left (she's also voting for Diana tonight, too). That's a really dumb reason to vote for someone, just like voting for someone simply because they're cute, or because they remind you of a person from the previous year's show, or whatever other reasons people use to vote aside from talent, is dumb.
Angela