It was also a very fine voting that was far less predictable than it has been in years. Most countries dropped the exaggerated "dear neighbours"-approach and if there has been any cases of uncalled-for bias at least I haven't been able to detect them.
But perhaps since the voting in general looks clean and fair, some things stand out to hurt my eyes anyway. Maybe they stand out even worse because most countries behaved.
When looking at the detailed results and individual jury scores you realise some things do not look good in daylight. San Marino's jury have things to explain, for instance. At least one person changed his/her mind about Azerbaijan rather dramatically between the semi final and the final. I'd like to know how that happened.
Then there are the juries in Armenia and Azerbaijan. All Armenian judges put Azerbaijan in their last place, and the Azeri jurors did exactly the same. That has nothing to do with music, but is an act of politics. The very same jurors also obviously sabotaged the scores for Austria - surely as political a statement if not more.
The EBU said they would take strong measures against any kind of vote manipulation this year. If this is not vote manipulation, then what is?
Appointing a jury that clearly does not vote for musical preferences but in accordance with the political agenda of their country - is that what the EBU wishes for. A long hard talk with these broadcasters would be in place.
Also, the EBU should scrap the current voting system where every juror ranks all songs instead of just voting for their top ten. It makes it far too easy to sabotage the chances of one or several songs for the wrong reasons. Time to look over the system, admit it is not working and go back to something better.
