John Oliver ruffles feathers in New Zealand with campaign to make puking mullet the bird of the century
Foreign meddling has swamped New Zealand's vote checkers to the point where they have had to postpone declaring the winner.
The contest is to choose the nation's favorite bird and the interference is from comedian John Oliver.
The yearly event, which is usually marketed as Bird of the Year, is organized by the conservation group Forest and Bird with the goal of bringing attention to the state of the country's native birds.
which have been forced to go extinct in certain cases. To commemorate the group's centennial, this year's competition was dubbed Bird of the Century.
Oliver discovered a loophole in the rules, which allowed anybody with a valid email address to cast a vote.
So he went all-out in a humorous campaign for his favored bird, the pūteketeke, a water bird, on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.”