Just concerns me who is looking after the votes and do you think the X Factor team could alter the real number of votes to get someone through?

Strictly used to say that the votes were independantly counted and verified, but to the best of my knowledge XF have never said this. It's likely that Syco are doing the counting without independant auditing.

So they could change the result and no one would know!

I doubt if the phone vote is fiddled with TBH. If they ever got cought there would be hell to pay.

Where I do think they need monitoring is to stop them giving Scowell the results during the break after the bottom two have been announced so that the judges can't be told how to vote to ensure / avoid deadlock. The results of the phone vote should not be known by ANY of the judges until after they have said who they want to send home.

The counting is done by Harvest Media Group who manage the voting platform. This year, they were also appointed to manage voting for Strictly Come Dancing.

Its handled by an outside company and heavily audited , so no.

Broadcasting regulations insist on that.

Plenty of manipulation on the show, but the phone vote is legit.