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Artist News Awards
Eurovision to ban vote rigging countries for three years
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 7 February 2014
The Eurovision Song Contest has announced a further change to its rules, following the discovery that Azerbaijan tried to rig the vote at last year’s event.
As previously reported, an investigation into irregularities with the Azerbaijani vote was launched by the country’s president, Ilham Aliyev, following last year’s contest in Sweden. It was found that, despite strong support from the public and the country’s judging panel for the Russian entry, ‘What If’ by Dina Garipova, it had ultimately been awarded nil points. It was also claimed that Azerbaijan had attempted to pay Lithuanian students to vote for the Azerbaijani entry.
In September, Eurovision organisers revealed that the members of all juries for the 2014 event would be announced on 1 May, and all votes by those judges would be made public after the final for the first time, in order to combat vote rigging. Further to that, it has now been announced that any country found to have attempted to rig votes would be banned from the competition for up to three years.
Eurovision’s Executive Producer, Jon Ola Sand, told The Guardian: “The ban is up to three years and no one should be in any doubt that we will act if we detect voting fraud. It is a drastic move but we are all in this together and we have to make sure nothing happens, it is not good for the brand. I have asked broadcasters, if you know something come forward and show me. If I have a smoking gun or evidence I can act, but I cannot act on rumours”.
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Denmark on 6, 8 and 10 May.
