The Eurovision voting system is broken. And that has led to becoming a propaganda tool

Eurovision has attracted the eyes of the entire continent this weekend (the audiences in RTVE were stratospheric), although this year a series of lines that place the contest in an awkward position have been crossed. The participation of Israel, controversial from the first moment, and the overturning that the scores gave at the last moment have put on the table the idea of ​​the Use of the system for political propaganda purposes. And the fault is, in part, of the way of scoring.

What happened. That a series of events took place that, separately, could not attract attention, but that added to an unusual edition, with cross accusations and, more than ever, a festival in which music has been relegated to an absolute background.

• Israel starts lazy → Israel received few points from the jurors of the countries. Only Azerbaijan gave him 12 points, which left him in the tail of the scores, with just 60.
• Robo in the scores → but with the points of the televoto there was a dramatic turn: he received 297 points of the public, with 12 points in 13 countries, including Spain. Many others gave him the 10 points of the second position. Israel led the classification until the last moment, when Austria received the points of the Televoto and surpassed it for just a dozen advantage.

How to vote. The voting system goes beyond a mere “first the jury, then the public”, and carries with him A account of a certain complexity: The European Radiodifusion Union computes the votes of its spectators, collected by call, text message or internet. Each person can vote up to 20 times, but not by their own country. The spectators of non -participating countries (“Rest of the World”) group their votes and count as if they were one more country (which also allows to vote to countries like Israel).

Next, a list of the most voted options in each country is prepared and the same points as the jury: 12, 10, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 points, regardless of the number of people you have voted are awarded to the first 10. That is, it is not about how many total votes are those who remain above but simply that they are The most voted In each country. These points of the public are worth half of the total, which enables radical modifications in the jury’s decision, as has happened this year.

Made the law, made the “trap”. That system explains that it is relatively simple to mobilize certain political positions to vote in one direction or another. David Saranga, acting director of the Public Diplomacy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, admitted to the Ynet portal, as stressed See youthat his body intervened in previous years to promote the vote to Israel, achieving 12 points by the public. Influential profiles on social networksmatches of right and means opposed to government They served as a speaker for a positioning related to Israel that resulted in votes.

Not so much televoto. The voting system It has evolved With the passage of time. Until 1997, the winner decided on national jurors, without direct participation of the public. Between 1997 and 2008, the televoto by telephone and SMS was the main system and the jury was only used as support. Since 2009, the current mixed system was established: 50% of the result comes from the televoto and 50% the professional jury. The intention was to avoid precisely situations such as those that have been seen in this edition, although they have led to mass votes in the opposite direction, as happened with the Victory of Ukraine in 2023.

Spain protests. This propaganda work that, despite the statements of Saranga, has been camouflaged as spontaneous movements by high Israeli charges as Israel Minister of the Diaspora, Amichai Chikliit fits perfectly to Eurovision rules. That has not prevented RTVE from asked the European broadcasting union open a debate about “the appropriate” of the Televoto and if it is being manipulated by political interests. In addition, as announced by the public channel itself in its news, it will request an audit that specify and break down the voting of each country.

TVE against Eurovision. This audit, of being held, will be the last confrontation of the public channel and the European broadcasting Union. Before that, last Thursday, in the presentation of the second semifinal, The presenters Julia Varela and Tony Aguilar said that “this year RTVE has asked Eurovision for a debate on Israel’s participation in the festival. The victims of Israeli attacks in Gaza already exceed 50,000, and among them, more than 15,000 boys and girls, according to the United Nations Organization.” Those words earned a warning to RTVE, who responded with a poster before issuing the contest positioning in favor of Palestine.

Melody’s failure. It has been suggested that the low classification of Spanish representation could have to do with this conflict between RTVE and Eurovision. And that his position 24 is not something that we are precisely unusual in Spain: in the last twenty years, We have remained in positions below 15 times 16 times. This year the perspectives were better: the forecasts put it among the first 15. Not having an apparent explanation for the debacle, conspiracy theories were launched blaming these bad results to the pro-palestine position of the government and RTVE. It was then when He put on the table The idea of ​​manipulation in voting.

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