The first round of voting on what TV Characters and TV shows will enter the May Madness V tournament was wrought with complications.

First was my own scheduling, which saw me not get the voting groups out till late in the 3rd week of the month, almost a whole week later than last years.

Follow that up, once the groups were up, I was unable to log in to my twitter account for my awards & May Madness event updates. A glitch in twitters code was leaving me logged in on my Main twitter account. The issue was not resolved till (after 4 tweets, and 3 emails to them) 6 days later, on the day that originally I had the polls scheduled to close.

With that hiccup finally out of the way, I decided to extend the deadline for 2.5 days. Only to have another issue come up immediately after that. For reasons I still don't know, my tweets on my awards/May Madness update account were not showing up in general searches. It seemed the only way to SEE those tweets would me if you were already 1 of the 865 followers of my account. No new viewers would see them unless someone else retweeted them, or they by sheer fluke found my account. That issue lasted for about a day.... leaving really only about a day & 1/2 of an 8 day opening poll that the highest traffic source for these polls, twitter, was accessible to the rest of the world.

This of course led to some pretty low scores with some probably contenders finding themselves on the outside this year as their fans didn't get much chance to take part. because of the sheer twitter fuck up pile, I made the final group, albeit with limited spots, a bit more inclusive than I originally expected to.

Below is a list of winners from the first group, all whom have advanced to the May Madness V tournament that will start in early May.
To see the list of those who had automatic spots before the polls, see the list HERE

The Rules to nominate a candidate.

TV Characters
- Maximum Eight (8) spots will be given to any specific show.
- Character must have been in an episode on or after May 1, 2015 and before April 18, 2016
- You must provide TV Character name, and program for nomination to be eligible.
- You can nominate someone thru here, twitter, facebook, tumblr or tsu through the valid rules stated below.

TV Programs
- Maximum Sixteen (16) spots will be given to any specific Network
- Programs must have aired at least 1 new episode on or after May 1, 2015 & before April 18, 2015
- You must provide the shows Complete title, acronyms will not be accepted (ex - "How I Met Your Mother" - correct, "HIMYM" - Incorrect)
- You can nominate someone thru here, twitter, facebook, tumblr or tsu through the valid rules stated below.
- Reality TV shows are not eligible. Talk/news shows ARE eligible.

UNLIKE the BOTVAs, the amount of nominations may be the difference between getting in and not, so feel free to nominate someone already chosen, but
DO NOT nominate candidates already guaranteed spots. DO NOT judge comments on this post as the be all end all of total nominations stated. Nominations will also be counted thru facebook, twitter, tumblr and tsu as well.

To nominate on
- Twitter. Reply to this post for TV Characters, Reply to this post for TV Programs. You can add more than 1 nomination to a tweet.... long as you follow the rules about proper character/program names/titles fitting into it.
- Facebook. Reply to this post for TV Characters, and Reply to this post for TV Programs. You can put more than 1 nomination in your post, long as you follow the rules about proper character/program names/titles on them.
- Tumblr. Send nominations HERE (will NOT accept anonymous nominations) You can put more than 1 nomination in your post, long as you follow the rules about proper character/program names/titles on them.
- Tsu. Reply to this post for TV Characters or TV Programs. You can put more than 1 nomination in your post, long as you follow the rules about proper character/program names/titles on them.

Nominations end April 18th, 2015 (may be extended due to schedule on/around that date).