As of today new rules have been applied to Melodifestivalen, P4 Sjuhärad (radio station) was able to reveal that representants for an artist in Melodifestivalen had been buying thousands of votes with the help of a telerobot.
As an example Bert Karlsson (entrepreneur label manager) can confirm that cheating have existed since the webjoker came along. He was offered to pay 300 000kr (about 33700 euro) to get enough votes for his song in the webjoker competition to be able to get the song into Medodifestivalen.
As we know, in Eurovision it’s allowed to vote 20 times per household to prevent cheating just like the one happening in Melodifestivalen to prevent cheating. For next years show the producers will look over their rules and might apply the 20-times rule that already exists in Eurovision Song Contest.
For now, SVT have taken the decision to clarify the already existing rule, which states: “You can not purchase a service to market an entry”. They will now add that you can’t buy voting procedures and starting from 2nd chance you will be disqualified if this would happen.
Neither articles can confirm which artist this case is about, Telia (phone company) is currently trying to search for the computer that called in thousands of votes for one of the artists.
Do you think SVT finally has taken a step in the right direction to avoid cheating? Discuss it here in our forum.
Source SVT and aftonbladet.se.
