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Jury - fair or not fair? That's the question.

Terence
malta

Terence

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January 30, 2012
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4,182
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Malta
This is what I wrote in another forum:

As for the juries/televote controversy... being Maltese myself I do agree with the inclusion of jury votes:

Malta placed 6th with the juries, yet 25th in televoting, I'm not saying the song was worth more or less, but televoting really hurt our placement, and if you analyse the televoting country by country, then it's obvious diaspora is still playing a huge role:

Armenia - 12 from France, 10 from Belgium, 8 from the Netherlands (okay song was a favourite so maybe it's not the best example there)
Russia - 12 from Armenia, Belarus, Latvia; 10 from Moldova, Estonia and Azerbaijan; 8 from Georgia, Ukraine (in spite of the colflict) and Israel (huge Russian diaspora)
Romania - 12 from Spain, Italy and Moldova; 10 from Portugal
Poland - 12 from Ireland & the UK, and Ukraine (known to exchange points)

All of those are so predictable so I'm glad juries balanced things out (although they have been unfair to Poland, there I agree... then again, maybe Poland wasn't exactly jury material :p )

The semifinals are even worse:

Lithuania on televoting - 10 from UK & Ireland - that would've had them almost qualifying had it been televoting alone
Poland again - 12 from Ireland & UK
Romania - 12 from Italy
Belarus - 12 from Lithuania
Georgia got its only televote points from Lithuania (huge diaspora there) and Greece (always gives points to Georgia... could there be a huge diaspora there too?)

Had it been televoting only, Malta would've finished second last... again, I'm not saying we deserved to qualify or something but other countries are surely benefiting more than we do.
Click to expand...

There goes my argument... juries kill songs, televoting kills songs... for me the best is to have both!
 
Terence
malta

Terence

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Joined
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4,182
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Malta
A-lister said:
Indeed, this voting method is 100% flawed. We've seen juries that purposely put entries in the bottom in a calculated move to hinder televoters to have a say, we have juries that are bought, we have juries that put entries of enemy countries in their bottom.

The whole idea that televoters' 12 could end up with 0 is absurd, yet it's the televoters paying for all this.
Click to expand...

Now there I agree with you - British juries could purposely place Polish entries last at they know they'd do well on televote. Same goes for Belgian juries vis-a-vis Armenian entries etc. I don't know what to say, honestly... in an ideal world, juries should rate the song professionally but we know most of them don't (and don't get me started on Armenia/Azerbaijan placing each other last)...

At the end the 50/50 system favourable to some countries (Malta) or could work at other countries' disadvantage (as we have seen with Poland). xshrug
 
united_states

WhoKnows

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May 8, 2011
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2,894
I like having juries and televotes, but go back to pre 2013 system where the jury picks ten and the televotes pick ten. That seems fair to me.
 

Lona

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March 14, 2014
Posts
35
This is the first year the jury and televoting results were published so exactly. So in my opinion it is way too soon to accuse the UK jury of punishing Poland because they wanted to counter diaspora votings. Like other people have already pointed out, Poland's song itself is not exactly everyone's taste. And those two extra women showing their assets made the performance somewhat cheap. Just look at the comments under the official ESC video:

Donatan & Cleo - My S

Words like porn and boobs are being mentioned quite a lot. So I would wait and see how the UK jury will vote next year. If Poland will have a performance with a smaller focus on "sex sells" and most juries agree that the song is good, if the UK jury still votes them last, then there is a reason to complain.
 
simonPL
poland

simonPL

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1,035
I see your point, but people are voting because of their reasons, I don't think that only Poles voted for Poland in UK, someone voted because of boobs, someone because "it's funny", someone voted because of Cleo and someone because liked the song. Even here on this forum, we have people from UK (NOT Polish people) who liked "My Słowianie", so putting that song on the very last place was kinda unfair.

The same thing happened in Lithuania, I guess.

***

What do you think guys about jury votes only on semi-finales? I was thinking about this, but I'm not so sure if this is a good idea.

Is someone from Eurovision team going to comment that whole situation or they think that nothing happened?
 
united_states

mbx114

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Joined
February 5, 2013
Posts
10
I was curious as to how the contest would have finished under the old 50/50 system, when only the top 10 for juries and televoters were ranked. None of the top 5 change, but a couple of significant differences.

The biggest winners were:
Malta (23rd to 12th)
Azerbaijan (22nd to 13th)
Poland (14th to 8th)

The biggest losers were:
Spain (10th to 18th)
Denmark (9th to 14th)
UK (17th to 21st)

In terms of overall points Poland adds the most points to their score (+41), while Norway loses the most (-26).
Countries that did really well with either juries or televoters did much better this way, while countries that lingered as 9th or 10th best with both did not fare as well. Austria, by the way, would have added 6 points to their total and would have scored points with everyone but San Marino.

I think this is the better way of doing the 50/50 system. It rewards popular songs while still allowing a sort of credibility check from the juries. On the same token, juries would not have the power to remove points from a country for political, social, or sporting reasons.
 
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