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Voting in NI

  • Feb. 11th, 2011 at 10:54 PM
Fishy Circumstances
owlfish
I was just watching the competition streamed from Irish television, for choosing Ireland's 2011 Eurovision entry. (It'll probably be another hour until voting's done.)

The most interesting thing about the songs recap was that it included instructions on how people in Northern Ireland could vote. That's a different country. Surely, they should be voting for the UK's entry, not Ireland's. Do they get to double-vote there?

P.S. Strongest entry won, squeaking victory by a smidgen over the other strongest entry: Jedward will be in the Eurovision semi-finals.

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( Read 16 comments — Leave a comment )
perfectlyvague
Feb. 12th, 2011 12:36 am (UTC)
Anyone can vote for each country's representatives if you're that bothered - in fact some countries don't have a public vote for their representative/song, but during the actual Eurovision competition, you cannot vote for the country whose telephone exchange you are ringing from.
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2011 12:40 am (UTC)
But that's not quite how it works for NI. The gist of this is that NI *cannot* vote for the UK's votes in the final. They have to contribute to Ireland's final votes.
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perfectlyvague
Feb. 12th, 2011 12:55 am (UTC)
There appear to have been NI and Eire phone numbers for tonight's vote so UK people were voting as well.

As far as I can tell NI have to vote with the UK which is actually a bit of a cheat in terms of the not being able to vote for your own country thing (but I assume the smaller Eastern European countries have just the same swing due to someone from one country just living 10 miles down the road in another country) but as a result that means we vote disproportionately highly for Eire.
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2011 08:39 am (UTC)
No, I was wrong: NI can - as is most logical! - vote for with the UK. But it looks like people living there may *also* be able to vote with Ireland.
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perfectlyvague
Feb. 12th, 2011 12:57 am (UTC)
They're trying to put their own entry forward in 2012 so I assume this is a big issue for them.
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clanwilliam
Feb. 12th, 2011 01:19 am (UTC)
Um, where are you getting this from? It would, apart from anything else, be against the BBC's charter to directly exclude a part of the UK from a UK-wide event.

Just because NI is allowed, by RTE and the Irish government, to vote in the Irish selection, does not mean that it is automatically barred by its own country.

The UK (and it does compete as "Royaume Uni", not "Grande Bretagne" in Eurovision) is not having a national song contest this year - Blue have been selected without any reference to the public.

Allowing NI to vote in the Irish national song contest is not the same as NI being allowed to exercise two votes in Eurovision itself.
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owlfish
Feb. 12th, 2011 08:34 am (UTC)
Allowing NI to vote in the Irish national song contest is not the same as NI being allowed to exercise two votes in Eurovision itself.


I conflate. I meant that people living in NI could vote in two nations' song contests if this is true. Given how Eurovision works, any given person could vote dozens or hundreds of times in each.

Edited at 2011-02-12 08:35 am (UTC)
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perfectlyvague
Feb. 12th, 2011 03:39 pm (UTC)
Nope - just had the answer back - NI can vote for Ireland in the final contest which means that their phone exchange treats them as UK voters.
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( Read 16 comments — Leave a comment )