The results of the biggest election in the history of the world came through last week. No, I’m not talking about what happened in India. I’m talking about American Idol.

Look at the figures. In the Indian elections, 420 million people voted in a four-week process. In American Idol, a TV singing contest, more than half a billion votes are cast in a four-month process. Compare US elections. Voter turnout for JFK (1960) was 68 million. For Bill Clinton (1996) it was 96 million. For American Idol last week it was 100 million.

This show is exciting stuff. Recent episodes have been so thrilling I almost woke up.

Last year, viewers had to choose between a pretty boy singer and a pretty boy singer. This year they had to choose between a pretty boy singer and a pretty boy singer. Guess who won? Yeah. An elderly female yodeler. No, I’m joking, it was a pretty boy singer. I’d tell you his name, but the whole experience was so memorable that I forgot it exactly four seconds after I turned the TV off (which was shortly before the show started, actually).

But American Idol is now listed as most watched show in TV history, so I ended up being booked to discuss it with talk-show host Bernie Lo on Bloomberg TV last week. Bernie asked me which was the weirdest election I had ever covered. I told him that it was a North Korean one in the mid-1990s. In that election, there was only one candidate, Kim Jong Il. And he lost.

That must have been a MAJOR downer. The electorate (a group of his dead dad’s friends in a room) instead chose to make the corpse of his father, Kim Il Sung, "president for eternity".

Poor Kim junior! Can you imagine breaking the news to your best buds that you lost an election in which you were the sole contestant? Talk about humiliating. No wonder he is so weird and hostile. When things like that happen to me I ALWAYS make bad hair decisions and shoot nuclear missiles in all directions. (Ask my wife.)

After the TV interview, a viewer emailed me and said, "You can’t seriously compare American Idol with a political election. American Idol is all about money and secret deals and fooling the public into thinking that it is in charge and… hang on a minute, I see what you mean."

Mind you, I’m happy to report that current US President Barack Obama received 69 million votes by himself in the 2008 US election – more than any American Idol contestant has ever achieved.

But of course there is a key difference. American Idol winners are humans. No sensible person would say that about Obama. Consider commentator Jon Stewart’s report on the US President’s recent Middle East tour: "After a quick meet-and-greet with King Abdullah, Obama was off to Israel, where he made a quick stop at the manger in Bethlehem where he was born."

It is only a matter of time before people all over the world use game show formats to choose political leaders. But I give you a warning. If you think American Idol is annoying, the Asian version will surely include the most painful form of torture on earth. Yes, karaoke. Be very afraid.