Eurovision director addresses voting concerns in open letter
Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, has released an open letter following voting concerns surrounding this year's competition.
The statement comes amid ongoing debates regarding Israel's promotion of its entry, as well as discussions among several national broadcasters about the current voting system.
Earlier this week, RTÉ requested a breakdown in Eurovision voting numbers from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and its voting partner Once.
Spain's public broadcaster, Radio Televisión Española (RTVE), previously called for a "complete review" of the voting system to "avoid external interference and manipulation", referencing votes received by Israel in the public vote.
In his letter, Martin Green said that Eurovision employs specially developed systems designed to prevent fraudulent voting.
He said: "The ESC voting system includes multiple security layers and a comprehensive set of rules to ensure that a valid result is generated. Our voting partner - Once Germany GmbH - uses redundant systems and multiple platforms to ensure the correct delivery of votes to the central system.
"For the Eurovision Song Contest, specially designed systems are used to monitor and prevent fraud. Additionally, more than 60 individuals in Cologne and several others in Vienna and Amsterdam monitor the voting process in each country and maintain direct contact with telecommunication and broadcasting partners globally. All results are verified through an 8-eye principle by the CEO and senior employees of Once, who collectively have over 40 years of voting experience."
Mr Green explained how "independent compliance monitor EY oversees and authenticates the results".
He added: "Every decision related to the outcomes is documented and assessed. The entire process, including the result calculation of the platform and the voting results is thoroughly reviewed and verified by EY.
"All audience voting, be it SMS, call or online shows evidence of the motivation of communities or diasporas around certain contestants. This can be for many reasons including personal attributes, back stories, geographic affiliations and current affairs. Historically the ESC has been as open to this as other singing and music competitions and reality television.
"Every year the Reference Group for the Contest, which contains representatives from and acts on behalf of our Members, studies the data provided by our voting partner Once to make recommendations of any actions available to us to ensure our rules and systems remain fail safe and take into account contemporary external factors such as advances in technology and external influences. This process will happen as it always does in June this year."
Mr Green said what the EBU "will be looking at is the promotion of our acts by their delegations and associated parties" and "want to ensure that such promotion is not disproportionally affecting the natural mobilisation of communities and diasporas we see in all entertainment audience voting".
Discussing the existing voting system, which allows each person to cast up to 20 votes, he said that the rules would be reviewed.
"Another example is the number of votes we allow per person – 20 per payment method. This is designed to ensure that audiences of all ages can vote for more than one of their favourite songs and there is no current evidence that it disproportionally effects (sic) the final result – but the question has been asked and so we will look at it."
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