Eurovision confirms voting irregularities in semi-final

Eurovision has once again been the subject of controversy, with irregularities in the voting on the night of the second semi-final.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has responded to these rumours after undertaking an investigation, and what it found was that the votes of six countries were recalculated.

In their statement, the organisers said that an algorithm is used to detect any irregularities in the voting, with countries unable to vote for themselves. Nor are they supposed to collude with others when it comes to voting, hence the use of software to detect any such transgressions.

The issue was picked up in the second semi-final, which is believed to stem from an agreement among themselves to vote for each other.

What the computer algorithm detected is that their votes did not coincide with that of the popular jury (50 per cent of the vote), which resulted in their votes being discounted. As a result the six countries Romania, Georgia, Montenegro, Azerbaijan, San Marino and Poland, lodged a complaint.

But following the investigation, organiser were found to have adhered to the rules with EBU saying: “In the second semi-final, it was noted that four of the six jurors placed five of the other countries in their top 5 (taking into account that they could not vote for themselves); one juror voted the same five countries in their top 6 and the last of the six jurors placed four of the others in their top 4 and the fifth in their top 7. Four of the six received at least a set of 12 points, which is the maximum that can be awarded.

“The pattern in question was detected as irregular by the pan-European voting partner […], as five of these six countries were ranked outside the top 8 by the juries of the other 15 countries that voted in the same semi-final”, the EBU explained. “It is an irregularity in the jury’s voting pattern of such magnitude that it is unprecedented.”

That meant the votes of these representatives were removed and replaced with an automatically calculated vote, which was approved by the President of the Reference Group of the CES, the Board of Directors of the Contest, and the Deputy Director General of the EBU.

The voting of the countries concerned has been made available to the public, in which it can be seen that each voted for the other five as their top choice. When a country was eliminated, they simply voted for the artists of those remaining in their group.

The intervention of the algorithm that picked up the voting irregularities, helped the UK entry into second place at the expense of the Spanish entry, Chanel.

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