I can see that you are in a tough situation. I am not sure what I would do in your place, but it just seems odd to me that people who actually participated in the contest, don't get to participate in selecting the winner because they were not registered here when they entered the contest. The contest was explicitly stated to be open to people who were NOT members of the Internet tablet community when it was said you didn't need to have an Internet Tablet to enter the contest. I don't remember seeing in the rules anywhere that in order to vote you needed to be registered in the tablettalk forums BEFORE the finalists were chosen. If I had, I would have surely registered when I made my entry. Even a finalist might not be able to vote for themselves. I guess for me personally, it doesn't really matter, because I would have voted for icerabbit and he didn't make the finals. I liked icerabbit's video because he made the kind of video I wanted to make but just didn't have the time to do. His video was exactly what I thought you were looking for, but based on the finalists who were chosen, I must have misunderstood what you wanted. Only one person that I would have chosen for the final five was there. I would have liked to have given them my vote, but it won't break my heart not to do so.

I think the contest was a great idea, and you paid for the prize, and I think you need to do whatever you think is right to make it fair. I am fine with not being able to vote myself it accomplishes that goal. I agree with what some other people have said about the videos being able to be viewed before the contest was over being an issue, but I wonder if you would have received as many entries as you did if you did it differently? I probably would not have made one. Seeing other people's videos gave me the inspiration to make my own. I also agree that seeing the poll results while the voting was going on was an issue, and it makes sense that you took it down. As this was your first attempt at this, I guess there will always be learning pains in anything anyone does the first time. I guess the main thing is you made a valiant effort and you are still trying to do the right thing, which is commendable.

I would be interested to see who would have won out of all of the contestants who entered if only people registered with InternetTabletTalk before 11/17 were allowed to vote on ALL the entries. I am not saying they should win the Tablet, because those were not the rules, but that person would be the person the Internet Tablet community you speak of would have really chosen on their own. Maybe it would be one of the five finalists. Maybe it wouldn't. Even if it were one of the five finalists, it still might be a different person than will win now, because the votes would be distributed differently.