The Vote for Sanjaya campaign that Howard Stern and VFTW.com are pushing makes sense on alot of levels.
First off, The show is obviously rigged in the sense that the judges get to pick who makes it through to the finals. They're sticking people in there with less talent to make the show more interesting. If someone like Sanjaya or Antonella were to make it even to the final 2, this would backfire and possibly force the producers/judges to be more critical in selecting who makes it through.
Then there's the fact that with Sanjaya getting all these extra votes, it makes the rest of the competitors more aware that they're vulnerable, which should make them step up and perform at their best every week instead of flying through under the radar with "safe" performances.
You also can't ignore the fact that it makes the show alot more entertaining. I've watched it casually in the past, but this season I'm hooked. I love watching the results show and seeing that he's not only safe, but not even in the bottom group.
Lastly, it shows that the show is really a popularity contest and not a singing contest. You can look back to all of the previous years and pick at least 2-3 singers who were better than the winners of those seasons. Maybe if Sanjaya wins, that'll push the show to rethink their voting system and make more fair to the real talent.
And if you don't think there's enough of a following to push him through to the final show, think again. Stern has about 6 million listeners. Conservatively 10% of them are voting, at least 10 times each. And it's steamrolling. He's getting more and more people into it every week as they realize it's actually working. If he has 1/4 of his audience voting 10 times each, that would add up to about half of the show's average weekly claim of 30 million votes. And that's not counting VFTW.com and Sanyaya's actual fans' votes.
