Uh-oh! The phone votes scandals refuse to die!

Latest on the block is the Dancing On Ice final – Vodafone have owned up losing 11,500 votes on the Saturday night final. Now, while I’m sure the scandal makes for great headlines (The Star is running with TV ICE DANCE FINAL A CON), the reality is that the missing votes only account for less than 1% of the total, and anyone whose vote was missed gets a refund.

I think that’s fair enough, don’t you?

It would be nice if ITV released the final vote percentages so that we can see for ourselves how close the competition was and how much of an impact 1% of votes would have made.

If the missing votes were representative of the other votes, then there was probably a fairly good spread between contestants anyway. Unless there was a problem voting for a specific contestant like Claire.

Maybe we need to see more transparency in television phone votes?

Like I said earlier, I’ve read a few posts about the phone-in scandal that ‘rocked’ the tabloids last week. You’ve probably forgotten all about it by now and are texting your vote for something really important as you read this….

Denise calls the whole scandal a wake up call for TV bosses:

How can trust be rebuilt when channel 5’s lunchtime interactive quiz Brainteaser sets a competition during an ad break, doesn’t get any correct answers in that time so uses one of their own production team to pretend to be the winning contestant?

I say news moves so fast these days, the public will forget equally as fast. Since most people’s phones are like an extra appendage, voting is like second nature. Start your amnesia engines now and vote for your favourite contestant!

Jo is equally sceptical about the voting and cites a different example:

Let me get this straight.

I pick one of these people, some of whom are self confessed socialites all fresh from their public schools and living off daddy’s money in Sloane Square. I pay to text in. And THEY win £15,000. What exactly is in this for me? It must be the first competition that offers you absolutely nothing. It’s like going into a sweet shop, asking for 35p worth of cola bottles and getting diddly squat, not even a paper bag for your trouble. Ooh but in return, the shop owner puts your 35p towards a lottery ticket which wins him lots of cash.

My Daddy always says a fool and their money are easily parted. He says it in a patronising voice, but that’s not important.

I don’t do phone votes. I don’t do scratchcards. I don’t do anything that involves parting with cash for something that has no discernible benefit. What are the odds of winning the lottery again? Why bother?

I think the desperation in some presenters’ voices shows sometimes. We worked out a while back that a close-run phone-in with 1% between contestants is a huge gap really. Imagine 5,000,000 votes. 1% is 50,000 according to my shoddy GCSE maths! Doesn’t look so close now, does it?

Anyway, I’m rambling. What do you guys think about fixed phone votes? Did you vote much in the first place, and will this change things for you?