Designing a fairer voting formula for Eurovision requires addressing the contest’s most persistent issues: bloc voting, political bias, jury inconsistencies, and the influence of diaspora communities. Here’s a proposed formula that balances musical merit, diversity, and transparency, while minimizing political distortions.

Core Principles for Fairness

Proposed Voting Formula:

1. Split Voting: 50% National Juries / 50% Public Vote

National Juries:

Each country’s jury ranks all songs (not just their top 10).

Jurors must include music industry professionals (e.g., composers, producers, critics) with diverse backgrounds to reduce bias.

No jurors from the same country as the act they’re judging to avoid conflicts of interest.

Publish individual jury rankings (not just aggregated scores) to increase transparency.

Public Vote:

Restrict voting to viewers in the participating countries (no global voting) to reduce diaspora dominance.

Use phone, app, and SMS voting, with IP/device limits to prevent ballot stuffing.

Normalize public votes by country size (e.g., cap the maximum points a country can award based on its population or Eurovision viewership).

2. Regional Diversity Bonus (RDB)

To reward songs with broad appeal and penalize bloc voting:

Divide Europe (and participating countries) into 5–6 regions (e.g., Nordic, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Balkans, etc.).

For each song, calculate a Regional Diversity Score (RDS):

RDS = (Number of regions awarding the song 8+ points) / (Total number of regions)

Example: If a song scores 8+ points from 4 out of 5 regions, its RDS = 0.8.

Multiply the song’s raw score by its RDS to boost songs with cross-regional appeal.

Rationale: A song that scores well in only one region (e.g., Eastern Europe) would see its total reduced, while a song with consistent support across regions would be amplified.

3. Anti-Bloc Penalty (ABP)

Identify historical voting blocs (e.g., Nordic countries, Balkan countries) using past data.

For each country, calculate a Bloc Voting Index (BVI):

BVI = % of points a country awards to its historical bloc (e.g., if Sweden gives 70% of its points to Nordic countries, its BVI = 0.7).

Reduce the voting power of countries with high BVI:

If a country’s BVI > 0.6, its jury and public votes are weighted at 50% (e.g., its 12 points become 6).

Rationale: Discourage countries from consistently favoring allies over musical merit.

4. Jury-Public Alignment Check

For each country, compare its jury ranking and public vote ranking for the same song.

If the discrepancy is extreme (e.g., jury ranks a song 1st, public ranks it 20th, or vice versa), adjust the country’s vote weight:

Flag the country for review by the EBU.

If a pattern of systematic discrepancy emerges (e.g., a country’s jury and public votes diverge in 3+ years), reduce its voting power by 20% in future contests.

5. Host Country and "Big Five" Adjustments

Host Country: Cannot vote in its own semi-final (if applicable) but can vote in the final.

"Big Five" (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain): Their votes are weighted at 80% of a standard country’s vote to account for their automatic qualification and larger influence.

6. Tiebreaker Rules

If two songs have the same total score:

*Song C’s country had a high Bloc Voting Index (BVI > 0.6), so its votes were halved.

Winner: Song A (highest total + strong regional diversity).

Why This Works

Potential Challenges

Complexity: Fans and broadcasters may find the system harder to understand.

Data Requirements: Requires detailed historical voting data to calculate BVI and RDS.

Political Pushback: Countries in voting blocs may resist penalties.

Real-World Inspirations

Eurovision’s Current System: Already uses a 50/50 jury-public split, but lacks regional diversity incentives.

Sports Rankings: FIFA and UEFA use regional coefficients to balance competition.

Academic Peer Review: Weighted scoring based on diversity of support (e.g., papers cited across fields rank higher).