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Show host Ryan Seacrest said 32 million votes were cast for last night’s contestants and enough of them chose the Point Pleasant hottie to move on to Idol’s sweet 16.
Her selection flew in the face of the show’s panel of judges, who largely criticized Barba’s past two performances.
The moment of truth for Barba came late in the show when she was summoned onstage as one of the final three performers to discover their fate.
Of the three, Seacrest chose to speak to Barba first, and he opted to torture the sexy songstress, and all her New Jersey fans, if only for a moment.
"I’m sorry," Seacrest said, holding for a long, pregnant pause.
"You’re going to have to deal with Simon again," the host said as he informed her that the voters had extended her stay.
There was no mention of the Internet controversy surrounding Barba on last night’s show and the embattled beauty was hardly featured at all -- a good thing for her considering those who were eliminated received the most air-time.
There’s really no telling either, if her Internet infamy was the main contributing factor in her survival, or if voters simply felt differently from the judges and liked Barba’s singing.
Her popularity in online searches however, can be directly linked to the seemingly endless batches of racy photos that have been plastered all over the Web.
Barba has yet to speak about the photos, or dispute that the images are her. One friend however, Amanda Coluccio, has been quoted in publications claiming that many of the pictures are not Barba.
Pictures ranging in naughtiness from party shots of her drinking, to fully nude, sexually explicit images are all purported to be the Idol star.
The show’s producers have chosen to ignore the Web buzz, or perhaps revel in it, and they haven’t acted to penalize Barba in anyway.
In 2003 however, Idol dumped contestant Franchelle "Frenchie" Davis after it was revealed that she posed topless for an Internet porn site.
And while the pictures and the controversy they’ve spread were not discussed last night, it was apparent that the judges felt the wrong young women were going home.
They didn’t mention Barba by name, but when show judge Simon Cowell was asked if the right contestants were eliminated, he said: "Not necessarily. No.
"But then this is American Idol, isn’t it?"
Even Cowell’s fellow judge Paula Abdul, who had the most generous assessment of Barba’s last performance, seemed to feel the voters were off.
"It’s a singing competition," Abdul said. "Everyone needs to vote and remember who they loved singing."
Barba will make her next American Idol appearance when the eight remaining female contestants perform again on Wednesday at 8 p.m.
That show will be followed by another round of voting and yet another elimination show the next night, also at 8 p.m.
