[EM] Interesting use of Borda count

[Olli Salmi]

At 21:16 +0200 26.1.2002, Bart Ingles wrote:

>> I'm not sure if this is very interesting. This year's Eurovision Song
>> Contest is approaching
...
>For clarification, are there exactly 11 or 12 nominees?  Or is there a
>much larger pool of candidates, from which each country is free to
>select its top 11 choices?

There are 33 countries in the European Broadcasting Union. Nowadays only 24
take part in the song contest each year. The countries with the least votes
cannot participate the following year.

Here's a news item about the present rules, with a link to the official
rules in PDF on the EBU site.
http://www.eurosong.org.uk/news/stories/rul02.htm

The link takes to this file.
http://www.ebu.ch/tv-cec_2002_rules.pdf

In case of ties, the participant who has obtained the highest number of 12
point scores is the winner. If it's still a tie, the number of tens will
decide, etc.

Each country votes by telephone during a period of five minutes, or it can
be 50% televote and 50% jury. The jurors vote immediately after the song
has been sung by giving each song from 1 to 10 points under the watchful
eye of a notary. The jury will be a backup in case the televote doesn't
work. The results are faxed to the EBU scrutineer before they are read on
air.

Olli Salmi