After announcing the non-participation of Joost Klein in tonight’s grand final, the EBU has clarified the changes in the voting procedure for tonight. These changes impact both the televote and the jury voting.
Changes for the televote
The running order was announced before the the incident involving Joost Klein took place. As such, broadcasters and telecommunications company have already affected the running order numbers to each country. These number will not change: all the songs positionned after the Netherlands will keep their numer (for example, Portugal remains number 18).
All contestants keep their number in the official Running Order. There will be NO song in position number 5.
EBU Statement
Even though the numbers are kept, votes for The Netherlands will not be valid. The EBU urges viewers not to vote for song 05. They will work with telecommunications company to block the lines for this number, but cannot guarantee that voters will not be charged. Normally, as can be read in the Eurovision voting rules published by each broadcaster, an invalid vote is free of charge.
The EBU will inform all telecommunications partners that the Netherlands is no longer participating, and we will endeavor to block the lines for Song 5. We ask that no one attempts to vote for Song 5. Should anyone try to vote for song 5 their votes will not count but there is a possibly viewers may be charged.
EBU Statement
Despite the non-participation of Joost Klein, the EBU does not use the expression “disqualification”, and The Netherlands still count as a participating country that will be allowed to vote, like a non-qualifier. Both Dutch votes (televote and jury) will be valid and used tonight.
The changed in the jury vote
Yesterday, Joost Klein did not perform live, but The Netherlands still took part in the jury show, with the semi-final footage being used instead. As such, jurors across Europe ranked The Netherlands along all the other 25 countries of the Grand Final. The EBU chose to keep these results by recalculating them.
The method used to recalculate the results, however, is debatable. According to the press statement, the rankings of each national jury will be used without The Netherlands, meaning that all countries below The Netherlands in a specific national jury ranking would go up one place.
The jury results, received after Dress Rehearsal 2 on Friday 10 May have been recalculated so that the Netherlands will not receive any points. This is why all jury members have to rank all songs from 1 to 26. For example: if the Netherlands was ranked 9th by a national jury in a country the 10th ranked song is now ranked 9th and will receive 2 points and the former 11th ranked song is now 10th and gets 1 point.
EBU Statement
The EBU could also have done this for each individual juror, and then re-calculated the full results, but it was not their method of choice. This may create even more debate…
In any case, this Grand Final will be unique in many ways. Stay tuned to ESCXTRA for any updates on the situation.
