This year's Eurovision Song Contest saw a total of 84 televote counts from the two semi finals and Grand final. The EBU has announced that there were a total of four glitches, one was in Spain where the semi final was not broadcast live, so no televoting took place. Due to a technical problem, televotes and SMS votes in Norway could not be counted in the final.
The EBU have announced that they are "very satisfied" with the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest voting procedures. "At the moment, an independent auditor is re-checking the incoming calls and SMSes. That is a standard procedure. Shortly after that process has been completed, we can announce the total number of votes" Svante Stockselius told their official website.
No problems were reported in the first Eurovision Song Contest semi final on Tuesday 12th May. In the second semi final on Thursday 14th May, one country failed to record enough votes to reach the minimum safety level set to provide a fair score, so only the jury vote was used. Spain's delay in broadcasting the show also meant that their result was the back-up jury score.
In the Eurovision Song Contest final, Hungarian televotes could not be counted due to a technical problem, but SMS voting was ok, so that was used to provide the public voting scores. In Norway, a technical mistake from the local telephone operator meant that both the telephone and SMS votes were unable to be counted. As a result, Norway's jury vote was used.
esctoday.com asked the EBU: "Even though only the jury vote for Norway was used, why was their vote out of the order determined by the voting running order draw?"
Sietse Bakker, Manager of Communications and PR told esctoday.com: "To make time to solve the issue, Norway was moved to the end of the voting. However, it could not be solved in time and we had to, according to the voting rules, only use the jury vote."
