The whole point of it is though so a country with 60m doesn't outweigh the votes of a country with 6m. The same applies in sport really - the Olympics are limited to one team or 2-3 athletes per country in each event regardless of the size of the population.
Surely there must be a way of using an algorithm to even out the population differences between countries in the voting system?
Serbia, Croatia, Latvia et al get the same voting effects as the UK, Germany and France, despite having far fewer numbers of people voting.
But population-based weighting would render the votes of small countries essentially irrelevant. That is just about the worst possible solution unless you want to abolish voting by country altogether and have a single Europe-wide vote.
It's rather like the EU system of democracy, where a country like Luxembourg has the same veto rights as the UK, despite having a population the size of Sheffield.
If you think EU democracy is problematic now, just think of how it would work if a handful of large nations could steamroll over the smaller ones. (It wouldn't.)
Here is the CuePilot for Oscar Zia's song 'Human' at this years Melodifestivalen. Probably the most visually stunning presentation of any song of the 2016 Eurovision season.
Surely there must be a way of using an algorithm to even out the population differences between countries in the voting system?
Of course there is - but that totally flies in the face of the spirit of the competition. One of the whole points of the competition is that Malta has just as much power as the UK, Cyprus has just as much power as Russia.
It also causes a real problem for two reasons.
1. The largest country, by population, is Russia (at 143.5m), so they would have the most power.
2. You can't vote for yourself, so larger countries are able to receive fewer points than smaller ones. (Russia would effectively have the least points available to it - because the largest block of votes would come from Russia)
If it happens, it's the death of the contest, as it basically says "Big countries are more important than small countries", and that flies in the face of an equal playing field.
It would be like giving a football team from a bigger country more men on the pitch than those from a smaller country...
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Serbia, Croatia, Latvia et al get the same voting effects as the UK, Germany and France, despite having far fewer numbers of people voting.
It's rather like the EU system of democracy, where a country like Luxembourg has the same veto rights as the UK, despite having a population the size of Sheffield.
But that's the point of the contest - every country is equal. It's just like a football tournament or The Olympics.
The sports analogies are faulty as no one is proposing that the number of entries or musicians should be in proportion to the population (e.g. 400 Germans vs. one Icelandic singer). Every country would still be sending just one entry, and the voters aren't contestants.
On the face of it, it would appear more fair if they went all in and copied Melodifestivalen's voting system completely. The jury votes would be equal for every country as they are now, but all the televotes would be pooled into a single Pan-European "constituency" with the points awarded proportionately.
But there are various quirks in the televoting that mean a proportional system will probably not work in practise. As mentioned, larger countries could be disadvantaged as their residents can't vote for them. And some people who live in certain countries may vote far more than others, which causes further distortions. So proportional televoting is good in principle, but problematic in practise.
Sad news this evening as Corry Brokken has died. She was one of those Eurovision artists that came up again and again. She represented The Netherlands three times, winning once, hosted (very well) in 1976 and announced the voting for the Netherlands in 1997 (giving 12 points to the uk, but being at the unfortunate end of a misunderstanding between herself and Urikka Johnsson when she pointed out she'd won the contest before and Urika infamously asked "A long time ago was it?")
The Ulrika incident was with Conny Van Den Bos, rather than Corry Brokken.
It was a misunderstanding on behalf of the audience rather than either Ulrika or Conny though. If you watch the incident Conny herself says "it was long ago" while Ulrika is talking and Ulrika repeats what she said as a courtesy for talking over her.
Last edited by Whataday on 2 June 2016 10:07pm - 3 times in total
Oh dear! Of course, if she'd given 12 points to the uk, she wouldn't have been talking to Urika! My mistake. Here's Corry (looking a lot more like Corry!) in 1997:
Having already posted my in-depth review of the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 Grand Final 9 days ago, here is a supplementary report to go with it. This one includes extended analysis of the televoting, a comparison of the jury and televoting, and how the scoreboard would have differed with the two sets of results presented differently.
