Obviously the past few days have been overshadowed by the jury voting scandal in 6 countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania & San Marino) whose scores were discounted by the EBU due to 'irregular voting patterns'. Their jury scores were then replaced by an aggregate score based on the votes from the countries in their allocation pot, who are decided based on historical voting patterns. This is not the first time we're seeing issues regarding the validity of the jury vote, countries have had their juries result thrown out before - Georgia in 2014 and Montenegro in 2015 spring to mind - and we of course had the Belarusian jury being disqualified for revealing their semi votes before the final in 2019. That was replaced by an aggregate score due to the voting system requiring 2 sets of scores, and of course a Twitter Eurofan infamously worked out that that aggregate score was the wrong way, causing huge embarrassment for the EBU. In 2022, we now have a situation where 6/40 jury results were, in effect, made up.

 

The change in voting system back in 2016 requires each country to give out 2 sets of scores, one from the jury and one from the televote. The EBU would never allow a return to the pre-2016 style of voting as you cannot deny that since then the voting has been far more exciting and tension building, leading to better viewer engagement and a proper climax to the show, rather than people turning off half way through the voting sequence as it's already clear Norway cannot be caught for example.

 

Firstly, there must be a rise in the number of jurors. It's a lot easier to say, get 2 out of 5 people to vote a certain way and this would have quite an impact on the result, than say if you're influencing 2 out of 10, 15 or even 20 people. I know smaller countries with less media industry professionals at their disposal would struggle, but I think it's absolutely crucial that the number of jurors goes up in 2023 more than anything.

 

They also need to be completely independent. I don't know for sure the protocols in each country, but we've certainly seen evidence in the past that these jurors are in the same room and openly discussing the show/how they intend to vote. If you cannot separate them to guarantee independent voting, then there must be an auditor present in each country. I believe at the moment that they only visit a handful of countries each year unannounced, which has obviously proven to be not good enough in preventing or at least discouraging foul play, to have 15% of your national juries, allegedly, doing so this year.

 

To address the need to replace a disqualified jury with an aggregate result. I do not agree with this either, there should be no place for what are, in essence, made-up votes being counted! To take San Marino as an example, they physically cannot have a televote so have theirs aggregated every year. Have a public jury in their case, or at least double the professional jury scores. Of course this is also tricky when their scores are thrown out too, meaning in 2022, both sets of points from San Marino came from a forumla in the computer spreadsheet.

 

I've waffled on a bit there, but what do you think can be done to try and restore credibility to the jury vote next year?

I don't get why they insist on these algorithmically generated replacement votes, if there's an issue with the jury I think they should either just not count the scores at all or count the televote twice. Likewise with the annual algorithmically decided San Marino televote, I think they should either not have a televote from San Marino or count their jury twice. Having parts of the voting be completely made up this way with no input from the country supposedly giving those points is a bit of a joke.

 

Also think we are owed a lot more transparency over what exactly the issue with the juries this year was, the way they've gone about dealing with it seems very shady.

Yes I've always thought that the two main things that should happen are:

 

1. Increase the number of jurors from 5 per country to at least 20

2. Find a way of ensuring they are voting completely independently of one another

 

I always find it suspicious that some random low ranking song will appear in the top three of every juror from a certain country. It always points to discussion between the jurors, there's just no way five separate individuals of different ages and backgrounds would have each put some random flop ballad at the top of their votes but it happens every year.

 

And yes, even though UK would have no doubt been third instead of second if they hadn't been counted, the aggregate (fake) votes clearly shouldn't be in the mix, imagine the uproar if it changed the winner. Just don't count jury votes from the affected countries, it's as bad as the made up chart streaming data on a Thursday.

I have been saying for several years that we need extra jurors - I suspect cost is the main reason it hasn't happened yet. Definitely need to keep them separated while watching the performances and quite possibly a referee or even swap jurors randomly among countries so that everyone is next to jurors from other countries.

 

Ultimately, some countries are going to be more susceptible to corruption than others and any auditing efforts to need to be focusing on those - and even repeat offenders removed from the Contest.

 

Also, as ever, they need to be a more diverse set and more fully represent different parts of the music industry. Singer-songwriters and music teachers tend to be highly represented, but more experts from within the music industry would be good to appear more frequently: DJs, instrument players, sound engineers, marketers, whatever, people in the music industry with different priorities to the current preference for well-trained, dramatic singing. Enough to ensure that no one style of music is advantaged over another, to achieve the aim of a diverse and interesting final show without that being a stated aim of their ranking criteria.

 

tl;dr nerf their preference for ballads (while still keeping them around to stop the madness of the mid-00s) it's well known at this point to the detriment of both the songs entered for Eurovision and the audience viewing experience

 

Because I do think that seeing multiple songs like Azerbaijan, Switzerland, Australia so roundly be rejected by the public and only propped up by this small number of people to be so high is quite noticeable. Especially when a null-pointer like 'Fade To Black' on the public vote qualifies from the semi.

 

On the other side of the coin, is there a problem with the way the public vote as to be imbalanced in the way they were for Moldova and Ukraine this year? Yes... but less of one, it's harder to change what the public does and by encompassing the opinions of so many more people it's more credible. Besides, a more diverse jury would certainly not have put Moldova with 14 points, it has much more musical merit among that final than that.

Okay for a more pertinent example that really illustrates why we need more jurors: The UK gave 8 points from the jury to Azerbaijan in semi 2.

 

The jurors ranked it 1st, 3rd, 6th, 14th and 15th. So because of two people with a third helping, it was the UK's third-favourite in that semi. The public of the UK ranked it 17th. It's even less people than 5 when the jurors disagree as many songs get ranking spreads like the above and Azerbaijan was just the highest below our top 2 by consensus. The only way to solve this and make it more even is more jurors.

Wouldn't the issue with just not counting a set of scores mean that those countries then have less points to give out, and then put themselves at an advantage?

 

The UK maybe wouldn't have been 2nd without a couple of fake 12's from Azerbaijan and Georgia, but the fake jury votes all included Spain and Sweden too, so you never know. We got 8 from the Azerbaijani televote, so I'm willing to take a fake 12 from them.

 

All the Spanish eurofans kicking off though whilst four out of five of their own jury thought that Azerbaijan was the best of the night, sure hun :')

 

I agree that we need more jurors, and I know it wouldn't be perfect as sometimes due to language or style you can tell which country an entry is from, but I'd love them to be able to watch the performances without knowing which country is which and just give them the song titles on their score sheets. Just trying to think of something that could solve the annual Armenia/Azerbaijan ranking each other dead last farce

Wouldn't the issue with just not counting a set of scores mean that those countries then have less points to give out, and then put themselves at an advantage?

 

That's true, there's no easy way around it, particularly for that reason. Double counting their televote is the only reasonable alternative there I guess, and again not a perfect one.

I think the idea of an expanded more diverse jury is the best thing. They are so ridiculously out of touch with the public and even music trends and tastes more generally. It’s holding the contest back having to wade through 20 of the exact same song each year because countries go after jury votes rather than send something that will appeal to the public.

 

 

Would also want to see some form of anonymous voting happening. Maybe the answer is not to reveal the running order until after the jury final or even to have the jury finals run in a random order. But they absolutely should be separated. Would love to see them spread out over the arena like kids sitting an exam. They can’t use their phones or leave the hall until they have their vote sheet collected by the EBU. Any violation results in expulsion of the jury member. Have multiple members kicked out and you pick up a ban from the contest.

I also wouldn't be mad at having the semi finals be 100% televote. The final really could've done with Albania & Cyprus this year to cut through those male ballads.

I don't know how you'd mathematically get this to work but I think I'd be in favour of altering the weighting of the public to jury to something like a 60% Public 40% Jury (as well as all of the other things mentioned in the thread so far). It's a difficult balance to strike since you need both to avoid the excesses of a 100% jury vote and 100% public vote system and as much as we protest against this being the narrative, certain countries will always have an inbuilt advantage on a televote system so you do need some kind of jury system in there to make it more of a level playing field.

 

Is there some merit in the Sanremo/Benidorm Fest "demoscopic" jury to be put into the mix somewhere?

I really think they need to expand the jury so that its far more diverse and i would be all for the jury having at least 15-20 members. Its crazy to think that 5 people have the same influence as say a half million voters in a country like the UK for example. Having more people i agree will help reduce them been influenced.

I would be for slightly changing the scoring aswell as i think it could help shorten the show which i strongly feel its something they need to in a few areas. But for the voting process i would have 3 stages

 

Jury votes like they do but only from the countries participating in the final.

Televotes reveal from the finalist countries

 

After the jury votes, the scoreboard to automatically apply the combined televotes and jury votes from the countries not participating in the final as this saves time calling in 16 countries or apply the jury votes from the 16 non finalists, something on these lines i think could have potential.

 

Just copying what I just posted in the green room earlier:

 

https://eurovision.tv/story/voting-changes-...ng-contest-2023

 

Now, juries will not be involved in the voting for the semi-finals and the viewers from around the world can now vote online.

 

Interesting changes here, possible we are seeing more accessible entries in the semis and fewer artistic entries, but we will reduce the power of jury rigging in the semis which happened this year.

I also wouldn't be mad at having the semi finals be 100% televote. The final really could've done with Albania & Cyprus this year to cut through those male ballads.

Adam bang on the money!

 

What’s the euromillion numbers this week?

Excellent, exactly what was needed based on the results this year - there's no point from an entertainment standpoint having jury faves that televoters hate in the final, and the jury will still be curating the final results such that televote overreach doesn't devolve into a joke.

I think the semis thing is a good idea, however not so sure about the entire world being able to vote

I’m not sure on this

 

I get giving the public more of a choice is a good thing in some ways, but then I think a lot of gimmicky songs will get through and the contest will lose some of the higher quality songs that have made the contest (in my opinion) better in the last few years.

 

Im probably not making myself clear, but I don’t want to go back to the era where the contest was seen as a joke because of the abundance of novelty songs

 

The BBC article irked me a little bit by pointing out Ukraine as an example of a discrepancy between Jury Vote and Public vote this year, completely ignoring the reason for the overwhelming public vote

I’m not sure on this

 

I get giving the public more of a choice is a good thing in some ways, but then I think a lot of gimmicky songs will get through and the contest will lose some of the higher quality songs that have made the contest (in my opinion) better in the last few years.

 

Im probably not making myself clear, but I don’t want to go back to the era where the contest was seen as a joke because of the abundance of novelty songs

 

The BBC article irked me a little bit by pointing out Ukraine as an example of a discrepancy between Jury Vote and Public vote this year, completely ignoring the reason for the overwhelming public vote

 

The televote and jury top 10s normally don't differ significantly in the semi-finals (normally 1 or 2 songs at most), and where they do differ, it's often a song that's in a more adventurous genre or just a pretty good quality entertaining song that's the one that misses out. Not a joke. Bad novelty that can barely be called songs like Dustin The Turkey or Leto Svet just doesn't qualify on either system.

 

https://escxtra.com/2022/05/29/opinion-its-...on-semi-finals/ - this article from back in May was right on the money I say (though I am biased as I am on the staff with that website, I agree with him completely here)

 

This is hardly a new phenomenon, over the years there have been some very wild and very frustrating discrepancies between the juries and televoters in the semi-finals. Particularly notorious examples of where clear televote qualifiers were tanked by jurors include: 

 

🇫🇮 2010: “Työlki ellää” (6th with the public, 15th with the juries)

🇲🇪 2013: “Igranka” (4th with the public, 14th with the juries)

🇵🇹 2014: “Quero ser tua” (7th with the public, 16th with juries)

🇪🇪 2017: “Verona” (6th with the public, 17th with juries)

🇩🇰 2021: “ Øve os på hinanden” (7th with public, 15th with juries)

 

Keeping songs like the above lot in the final and losing bores like the Fade To Black/Not The Same/Boys Do Cry trio this year who got a very embarassing FIVE televote points between the three of them would be a significant improvement.

 

full list of changes in recent contests - those are almost universally positive changes.

It's a good change, I echo the sentiments above. I suspect there could well be more novelty songs now, but only the strong ones will get through based on past results.

 

There have been way too many pedestrian (usually vocally competent but completely uninspiring) ballads that flop in the televote getting through in the last few years at the expense of interesting entries. I see no harm in weeding these out so that the final is more entertaining and musically diverse. The cream will still rise to the top in the final.

I think it is good, but obviously some countries don’t always get the best televiewers points. Australia can be very hit or miss.