Televoting

As something new, EBU were for the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest able to make up points. That they did for San Marino which did’t have a valid televoting result. The question remaining is now how EBU made up these points?

When EBU introduced the new voting procedure for this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, they also revealed that they are now able to use made up points: …”if – for whatever reason – a country cannot deliver a valid televoting result, a substitute result is calculated by the audience result of a pre-selected group of countries“. The same counts if a jury result would be disqualified.

This year a made up result was only used to replace the televoting result in San Marino. When EBU revealed the full voting result, they didn’t include information about which countries were used to calculate a televoting result for San Marino.

We asked Paul Jordan, Manager Communications & Online, Eurovision Song Contest which exact countries were used to make up the result for San Marino. Unfortunately EBU decided that this information shouldn’t be public available: “The Reference Group have decided not to make this specific list of countries public in order to protect the integrity of the televoting“.

One question is fair to ask in reply to this: Which integrity? When EBU makes up points like this, wouldn’t it be fair if the information on how they did so were made publicly available? In Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary the word “integrity” is defined as “the quality of being honest and fair; the state of being complete or whole”. Isn’t EBU doing the exact opposite by not revealing how they made up the points from San Marino? Doesn’t the population in San Marino, yes, they actually have a population of 31.500, deserve to know how EBU decided for them?

We encourage EBU to actually show some integrity here and reveal which countries were used to calculate what should be the televoting result from San Marino. Or to be completely fair and not have any points at all when there are none. Like it is now EBU can potentially decide the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest. An example: Ukraine won with 23 points ahead of Australia. However a mistake by a Danish jury member meant that Ukraine got 12 points from Denmark they shouldn’t have had whereas Australia lost two points. If you calculate that into the result, Ukraine only won with 9 points. Had Italy gotten a likely 12 points from the San Marino, Ukraine could max have won with 7 points – and maybe they wouldn’t even have won at all. In case of a close result, the way EBU makes up points can determine the result of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Below you can see the jury and the made up televoting points San Marino gave at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. As you can see there is a big difference between the San Marino jury and televote. Giving how close the country is to Italy, music and culture wise, it is also very unlikely that an actual San Marino televoting result would not have given any points at all to Italy. Francesca Michielin ended with 124 points on a 16th place. She probably lost some points and perhaps a couple of placements on this.

Televoting Jury 12 points to Ukraine 12 points to Ukraine 10 points to Russia 10 points to Italy 8 points to Lithuania 8 points to United Kingdom 7 points to Poland 7 points to Russia 6 points to Latvia 6 points to Georgia 5 points to Australia 5 points to Cyprus 4 points to Sweden 4 points to the Netherlands 3 points to Bulgaria 3 points to Malta 2 points to Armenia 2 points to Hungary 1 point to Hungary 1 point to Austria

In the previous rule set the jury points were used as televote as well in countries like San Marino where it wasn’t possible to have a valid televoting result.