Cincinnati Enquirer TV Critic John Kiesewetter was running a competition on the newspaper's website to find the top TV news anchor in Cincy.

He set it up like the NCAA tournament, making brackets with Anchors squaring off against each other, with the winner moving on.

His goal was at the end to find the top news anchor in the Natty.

That didn't quite work out the way he planned.

Old John really thought the TV people would play fair. They didn't and poor naive John isn't happy about it.

He writes: Why can’t we play nice??? I knew my Cincinnati TV Anchor Dream Team tourney would ignite the competitive juices at local TV stations, where everyone wants to be No. 1 in the ratings.

This was all for fun. I expected everyone to play fair.

That’s not happening. It looks like we’ve been hacked by auto bot voting – and I’m hacked off.

Between noon and 6 p.m. today, more than 16,000 votes were cast in the Tim Hedrick (#1 seed) and Randi Rico (#8) pairing. More than 12,000 votes were for Rico. Her vote total quadrupled from 4,194 to 16,343, vaulting her into a commanding lead with 65%. (As of 7 p.m., in the hour I’ve taken to write this, 5,300 more votes were cast in the race, upping the total to 30,366! Rico now has 18,416!)

Hedrick gained 3,959 votes in six hours – and saw the difference in the race swing from being ahead with 53% to being behind with 35%.

Two other races have seen big leaps, but nothing near 16,000 votes in six hours.