Organisers of Eurovision have issued a statement following calls to introduce a ban on national juries and scrap the jury vote altogether. Organisers admitted six national juries' votes were axed on Saturday night.
Officials said irregular voting patterns were detected, meaning the votes were replaced by aggregate scores. Votes from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino were all replaced.
The European Broadcasting Union’ issued a statement addressing the votes, which said: "In the analysis of jury voting by the EBU, pan-European voting partner after the Second Dress Rehearsal of the Second Semi-Final of the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest, certain irregular voting patterns were identified in the results of six countries.
"In order to comply with the Contest’s Voting Instructions, the EBU worked with its voting partner to calculate a substitute aggregated result for each country concerned for both the Second-Semi Final and the Grand Final (calculated based on the results of other countries with similar voting records). This process was acknowledged by the Independent Voting Monitor.
Read more: We're the Land of Song - and yet we don't have our own spot in Eurovision | Carolyn Hitt
Organisers added: "The EBU takes any suspected attempts to manipulate the voting at the Eurovision Song Contest extremely seriously and has the right to remove such votes in accordance with the Official Voting Instructions, irrespective of whether or not such votes are likely to influence the results and/or outcome of the voting."
Viewers had called for jury votes to be scrapped as they slammed this year's "baffling" scores.
Tucker Jones said on Twitter: "Serbia's entry demonstrated that audiences have audiences have more complex artistic tastes than nearly all national juries.
Finnix Montana added: "Latvia actually scored more points with the juries than televotes."
While Aoife Devigo expressed her anger that some countries didn't make it to the final because of the jury voting system. She said: "Abolish the juries. At least reform them? They’re obviously out of touch. Ireland & San Marino were fantastic (in the semi final) and only beccause they’re not ‘typical jury favorites’ ......they didn’t get through. They 100% did so well with televotes. I’m furious."
