San Marino “Protest Against” Eurovision Voting Changes

Voting changes applied to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm now see countries receive points from jury members and televoters seperately. For many this came as a welcome surprise, but the San Marino broadcasters weren’t happy, and now they’ve voiced their opinion on the matter.

It’s not surprising that the small south-European nation is kicking up a fuss – San Marino is the only country in the contest that does not provide a televote of their own, this is due to the nation not having an independent telephone system. Instead, with the new voting method introduced this year, it was announced by the EBU that the San Marinese televote was decided using the results of five to six countries’ televotes; averaged out. Since the 2016 contest it has emerged that San Marino RTV still does not know which countries were used to calculate their vote.

Earlier this year, the Head of Delegation for San Marino, Alessandro Capicchioni in an interview with ESCPedia.com has said that:

“The new system totally discriminates small states as it doesn’t allow them to deliver 100% of their vote. The change in the voting system has been decided without even telling us.”

Speaking later to Eurofestivalnews.com, Capicchioni stated that they are working to propose a new system which they view as being fairer. That system has now been revealed and details just exactly what San Marino wants to dowith the voting system they currently see as being so unfair.

“The proposal creates a statistically representative sample of viewers from a set number of people living in San Marino. These public ‘panel members’ would be required to watch two of the three Eurovision broadcasts and vote via the web in the same window of voting used by other European television viewers. The vote of this ‘panel’ would join that of the jury to go to form the total vote at the San Marino Eurovision Song Contest. Obviously in case of problems or malfunctions of the simulated remote voting system, the European Broadcasting Union may then resort to an emergency vote putting the current system to use not as a primary option, but as a backup.”

Eddy Anselmi, who has studied the history of Sanremo in great detail, comments that the model perfectly simulates the curve of votes. The system has been used for the Sanremo Festival (which indirectly selects Italy’s Eurovision participant), over the last four years.

Earlier this year San Marino RTV, the country’s national broadcasters, announced that they were to take legal action for the country’s lack of holograms in Eurovision 2016. It is reported that the production team behind Serhat invested a significant amount of money for the use of holograms in the singer’s performance at the Eurovision Song Contest 2016.

The report stated that the hologram was then forced to be removed from the performance due to last-minute problems, instead being replaced by five backing dancers. San Marino announced on May 1st that Serhat would be joined on stage by the backing dancers, stating that they had spent the previous week rehearsing the routine.