Eurovision|The Eurovision voting changes aim to prevent political influence in the song contest.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
The European Broadcasting Union EBU will introduce significant changes to Eurovision voting next year to prevent government-led manipulation of votes.
The changes include, among other things, the banning of third-party campaigns, the reduction of the maximum number of votes for an individual voter to ten, and the return of expert juries to the semi-finals.
The changes are especially related to the large vote received by Israel, which Ebu’s research body Spotlight stated was due to government bids at this year’s Eurovision.
Eurovision there will be significant changes to voting next year, report European Broadcasting Union Ebu.
The main reason for the changes is that Ebu wants to prevent, for example, government-led manipulation of votes for representatives of a certain country.
The topic has come to the surface especially this year and last year after Israel received a great avalanche of votes in the public vote. Ebu’s research body Spotlight found that Israel’s vote fishing in this year’s Eurovision was government-led.
Eurovision manager Martin Green says in the press release that the impartiality and reliability of Eurovision is of paramount importance to Ebu and its member countries.
In the announced there are four main points in the changes, which aim to prevent political influence on voting.
The first change is that campaigns sponsored by third parties – such as governments – to vote for a particular artist will be banned. Government of Israel has previously campaigned for voting for the representative of their own country.
Ebu’s announcement clarifies that “proper campaigning” of artists and songs is allowed when it is part of normal music business activities.
As another change, the maximum number of votes for an individual voter will be reduced from 20 to ten. The public has suspected that the large number of votes Israel received was due to the fact that all 20 votes were concentrated for the Israeli artist with different voting devices.
Third: expert judges will also be returned to the Eurovision semi-finals. In the last three years, the artists who advance from the semi-finals have been decided solely on the basis of public votes. In the final, the points are divided based on half of the expert jury and half of the public votes.
In addition to this, the size of expert panels will be increased from five to seven people. Two of the jury members must be 18–25 years old in the future.
The fourth change is not as concrete but more related to the system. Ebu says that he is increasing security measures aimed at identifying and preventing coordinated and fraudulent voting activities, i.e. so-called vote rigging.
Gift the member countries meet at the beginning of December. The meeting will decide, among other things, who will participate in next year’s Eurovision. The biggest interest is in what is decided about Israel’s participation.
Ebu has promised to introduce new measures to prevent political influence in Eurovision. The rule changes announced now play a central role in this.
Israel has already announced that it will participate in next year’s Eurovision. Similarly, among the current participating countries, the broadcasters of Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Spain have previously announced that they will skip the competition if Israel is allowed to participate.
Yle, representing Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest, has not taken a position on the subject so far. In the HS October survey 60 percent of Finnish respondents were of the opinion that Israel’s participation in visas should be denied.
What divided opinions more was the question of what Finland should do if Israel participates in Eurovision. 46 percent of the respondents would support Finland’s exclusion and 36 percent want Finland to be included, even if Israel is not excluded.