One of the burning questions in this edition of the Eurovision song contest was the new voting system, and while the new way of showing the votes turned out to an exciting success, one thing was forgotten after the initial anger and protests from San Marino RTV: How was the San Marino televote made up?
With the population of less than 32.000 and most using the Italian mobil phone companies the tiny ccountry never had televote before, and is unable to deliver valid one so EBU decided to made it up "using 5-6 unnamed country's scores to make up one", yet refusing to tell which countries were used. Certainly not the neighbouring countries that would have been maybe logical, as Italy scored null points in this "televote", something that is very unlikely would have happened if Sammarinese people would have voted, despite their historical dislike of Italians. History and differences apart, music united and music is the same. That may have cost Italy a place or two in the final chart (16th).
And what happened to the votes of those countries that were used for San Marino's televote? If they voted for San Marino did it count?
Using this secret combination vote EBU is in theory able to have say in the winner. If it's very close (think 2004) a little bit of fixing on one country's televote can make a difference and voilà, we have a different winner that it would have been originally. This year the difference between Ukraine and Australia was 23 points (or only 9 points if we consider the Danish voting mess). Let's think that instead of Australia it was Italy battling it out and then they score zero from San Marino, that is as said very unlikely instead of a possible 12 even .... It could make a difference.
This year the fake San Marino televoting gave these points:
12 Ukraine, 10 Russia, 8 Lithunia, 7 Poland, 6 Latvia, 5 Australia, 4 Sweden, 3 Bulgaria, 2 Armenia and 1 Hungary. That agrees only on Ukraine with the jury's vote (and Russia and Hungary for the lesser votes) that was:
12 Ukraine, 10 Italy, 8 United Kingdom, 7 Russia, 6 Georgia, 5 Cyprus, 4 the Netherlands, 3 Malta, 2 Hungary and 1 Austria. Just saying.....
San Marino's Head of delegation Alessandro Capicchioni confirms even they haven't been informed which countries were used and on what criteria, and that SMRTV is working on an alternative solution and wil soon hand over the proposal to EBU.
Comments