CHICAGO Win Controversial 2016 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Fan Vote; YES, THE CARS, DEEP PURPLE, STEVE MILLER Round Out Top 5

Voting for the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Fan Vote has closed and the winner should come as no surprise to anyone, reports Cleveland.com.

For months, there’s been speculation that the Fan Vote was hacked by computer bots, helping classic rock acts Chicago, YES, The Cars, Deep Purple and Steve Miller secure an early and insurmountable lead. And that’s exactly how things played out.

Chicago took the top spot with over 23% of the vote, followed by YES, The Cars, Deep Purple (pictured below) and Steve Miller. All five acts will comprise a fan ballot added into the voting pool of more than 800 ballots. Janet Jackson and Cheap Trick finished in a distant sixth and seventh place, respectively.

In total, the five top acts accounted for a staggering 87.5% of the vote. Overall, this year’s Fan Vote generated more than 160 million votes. Last year’s Fan Vote generated just 60 million votes over the course of two months.

The bulk of this year’s votes came within a weeklong period, when numbers surged and speculation began that the system had been tainted. But the Rock Hall remained loyal to the process.

Todd Mesek, vice president of marketing and communications for the Rock Hall, said the inflated numbers could be the result of an increased interest in the annual vote and numerous websites embedding the poll on their homepages.

However, Mesek also revealed the Rock Hall eventually put measures into place to prevent an outrageous number of votes from one IP address per day. After that, the number of daily votes dropped off significantly.

Read more at Cleveland.com.