National broadcasters for Spain and Belgium have now complained to the competition’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, after Israel won the public vote by a large margin.
RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, and VRT, the Flemish broadcasting company, are demanding that organisers investigate the televoting system, which allows voters at home to vote up to 20 times for a small cost charged to each vote by text or phone call.
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The EBU confirmed that RTVE and VRT had been in contact and said it took the complaints “seriously”.
Martin Green, the director of Eurovision, said: “It is important to emphasise that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country’s result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns.”
Relevant video: 8 Ways Eurovision Is Rigged for Israel
Confession: I actually watched the ESC this year despite my moral qualms. Sorry.
But it really struck me how fake it has become. The “performances” in the final were just recordings of the ones shown in the qualifying rounds (probably weren’t even live then). Words said by performers at the end of the song were chopped off. At the end when they showed clips of the performances with the performers in the “green room” reacting to them, pretty sure these were the same shots they used in the qualifying rounds. No continuous shots connecting the presenters to the performances. Every element of the show compartmentalized and combined using stock shots to fill in the gaps. Doesn’t even resemble a live show. I wonder how much of this is required to ensure that nobody says anything about Israel, or shows or wears any unauthorised symbols, and that any undesired crowd noise can be edited (sounded like that happened when Israel phone vote was announced). Fucking weird.
Of course the ludicrously high phone vote for Israel was expected. But what is the deal with Switzerland’s entry getting zero phone votes? That was really strange. Maybe the organizers agreed to donate all Switzerland’s phone votes to Israel.
Anyway, the whole thing is so fake and fucked up, I won’t be watching again. I feel sorry for the performers and the countries who try to contribute something good, it’s just wasted on Eurovision.