Just after the 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees were announced, we picked up on the oddity of the nine day discrepancy between the deadlines for the Voting Committee and the Fan Vote.

What's odd about the shorter fan vote duration is that the Voting Committee's 1200 e-ballots are due on March 25th, a full nine days before the Fan Vote closes, which counts as the single remaining ballot. With electronic balloting, the Rock Hall will quickly know who is getting in and will begin making arrangements based on that induction class well before April 3rd. The only way that final ballot will have any impact at all is if there is a tie for the 7th spot, and in previous years the Rock Hall has been known to increase the number of inductees even when the numbers are close. It may still be a point of pride for fans to finish in the top seven, but it ultimately won't make a difference.

Former Nominating Committee member Alan Light apparently got word from Rock Hall officials that the actual Fan Vote deadline was the same as the Voting Committee.

On today’s Sound Up podcast, Alan Light says that the Rock Hall Fan Vote closed at midnight on March 25th (even though it is still taking new votes). He goes on to say that Shakira finished in the top seven, which was not the case on that date.

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— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklegends.com) March 31, 2026 at 10:22 AM

Voting on the Rock Hall's website has remained open and should continue until midnight on April 3rd.

Why does this matter? From a practical standpoint, the impact of a single vote out of 1000 makes next to no difference in the results, especially when the Rock Hall has been known to be flexible in the number of inductees it selects when the votes are close. But let's pretend for a moment that the Hall of Fame had a rigorous vote counting process and the Fan Vote actually had some significance. Here are the Fan results at the time when voting closed for the official voters at Midnight on March 25th.

The top seven at this point would theoretically comprised the "Fan's Ballot" to be counted among the other completed ballots. Notably, Billy Idol was in the seventh spot, a position he would only hold onto for 18 more hours until Wu-Tang Clan overtook him in the standings. Within the next 12 hours, Wu-Tang and Idol were both passed by Shakira as she rocketed into the top seven. Shakira has continued her ascent to fifth place but it may all be for naught if the votes had already closed on March 25th.

So who got the vote, Billy Idol or Shakira?

We recognize all of this is trivial in the outcome of who gets inducted but it remains extremely important to the fans who have invested time and effort into the results. At the very least, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame needs to clarify which seven artists were submitted on the Fan Ballot and provide an explanation for the discrepancy in the end-dates for voting.

The inductees are scheduled to be announced on American Idol on April 13th.