Eurovision Director Defends Televoting System but Will Review It

Eurovision Director Martin Green published a letter on Friday addressing the criticisms received regarding the current televoting system and how, during the final vote count, it unexpectedly elevated the Israeli representative to the top positions, surprising both the audience and participants.

This week, RTVE sent a letter to the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the contest's organiser, requesting a "comprehensive review" of the current popular support system and an internal audit. In the letter, the Spanish public broadcaster called for a reformulation of the contest to eliminate any possibility of "external interference organised by countries, as has been recently demonstrated."

Martin Green, the contest's general director, to whom the letter was directly addressed—alongside Noel Curran, his counterpart at the EBU—responded on Friday through a letter published on Eurovision's official page, defending the validity of the current televoting system.

"It includes multiple layers of security and a complete set of rules to ensure a valid result. Our voting partner, Once Germany GmbH, uses redundant systems and multiple platforms to ensure the correct delivery of votes to the central system," he explains in the statement. For the festival, specially designed systems are used to monitor and prevent fraud. Additionally, more than 60 people in Cologne and several more in Vienna and Amsterdam oversee the voting process in each country and maintain direct contact with telecommunications and broadcasting partners worldwide.

Nevertheless, he openly expresses doubts that the association of 20 votes to each payment method could significantly influence the final result. "It is designed to ensure that the public can vote for more than one of their favourite songs, and there is currently no evidence that it disproportionately affects the final result," he asserts. Despite everything, he acknowledges that they will "analyse" what has been proposed from Spain.