For most of the viewers, the voting of the Eurovision Song Contest is the most exciting part of the show. Esctoday.com gives you a close look on the voting system. “May I have your votes please?“
As most of you know, the voting procedure takes around one hour. Five minutes, people from all over Europe have the chance to call (or SMS) a number to vote for a specific country except for your own. Only Russia will use a jury to vote this year because of the high amount of time zones.
After three minutes, all countries have to send the EBU their pre-votes by fax. When the votes after five minutes are too different from the three-minute overview, the first overview will be used as final score. During the voting, the EBU control room in Geneva, Switzerland, makes the connections with the broadcaster's representative that appear on screen. In Geneva, the images of the show and the broadcaster's representative will be combined.
During the voting, two computers will be managed in front of the stage. If one fails, the other one can be used and the second one can be fixed. The software at the computer is simple: the computer knows which country gives points, the person behind it can click on the country that gives one point, two points, etc.
There are three possible score board views: the first view gives only the complete ranking, the second view shows the broadcaster's representative and the score board while giving the points and the third view shows the hosts and the top 5. The last view has funny plastic flower animations (same flowers as the eurovision.tv website).
EBU (European Broadcasting Union) manager live events, Sarah Yuen, will be present behind the voting desk during the show to check if everything goes fair. Meanwhile, the Times of Malta reported that the EBU will send out some officials to a number of broadcasters for a surprise visit, to check if everything goes fair during the voting.
