One phone (one email) one vote. In theory it works but not in practice.
I have 5 email addresses (you couldn't stop IP addresses because that would mean 1 vote per house not per viewer), 2 mobiles and a land line.
If someone wants to vote multiple times they will do regardless. Personally I would rather have the phone vote price increased and the money go to charity again at least that way if someone is voting 10 times it's for a good cause.

If the show returns to the old days, ie: no phone vote the show would die on it's backside.

After some of the marking we have seen this series I would rather see the judges vote count for nothing than raised in importance.

While there have been tweaks such as the dance-off and how tied scores are managed, the basic principle of a 50-50 split between judges and viewers has worked fine for eight seasons now. You can't take power away from a public that already doesn't trust the impartiality of the judges.

Hasn't every series had a phone vote? I thought thats how Chris Parker managed to make it through to the final because of phone votes?

Unless of course you are talking about the old Come Dancing programme, which didn't have phone votes but more importantly didn't have celebrities either. It was an entirely different programme to SCD.

Phone votes shouldn't be scrapped on SCD because that is part of the show. Personally, I prefer a dance off between the two lowest scoring couples, with the better dancer to be saved by the judges.

I would imagine that the reason that there aren't many votes cast is because the voting window is too small. The majority of households have timeshift tv these days and I would bet that a lot of them don't sit down to watch it live, especially as it is on so relatively early in the evening. I don't begin to watch it until at least 7.30-8pm because I like to get all chores out the way first and sit down relaxed to watch tv. By the time I've finsihed watching, the vote lines are closed.

I don't think I'm in the minority either, Whilst some may watch it live, I'd bet a lot of folks don't.

The phone vote allows the audience to be involved and they are more likely to watch week after week.

Maybe only one vote per phone used? that could cut down on the block voting and the digital phones set on redial, that often blocks others from getting through to the lines.
With modern digital technology, such filtering should be perfectly possible.

As long as you enable caller ID then yes. I've said as much on the Big Brother and X-Factor forums.

The problem is that as long as there are insider tip offs, and bets taken there is always the possibility that in any given week an organised gang could swing a result in order to make a profit.

This is all getting unnecessarily complicated.

I've seen a post on here before that suggests using percentage scores rather than finishing positions on the judges leaderboard. This would make all parties happy. There would be plenty of chance for people to overcome poor scores provided they had enough public support. As the competition goes on though, the deficit to the better dancers would increase based on judges scores requiring a much greater public support to keep them in.

I'll illustrate with an example (because I'm bored and have nothing to do)

Contestant A - lets call him Quentin Widdecombe, gets a score of 10 from the judges.
8 other contestants score 20 and contestant B, lets call her Kara Halfpenny gets 30.

The 10 dancers score total 200 and each contestants scores are calculated as a percentage of that total. The 8 dancers with a score of 20 would each get 10% of the vote with Quentin getting 5% and Kara getting 15%.

Quentin would then only need to get 5% more vote than the least supported of the 8 middling dancers to stay in.

When it gets to the final 4 dancers though it becomes trickier for Quentin to get through. Assuming Quentin hadn't improved much and got a 15 from the judges with 2 other contestants with 25 and Kara getting 35. The total for all scores would be 100.

Quentin would need now need an extra 10% of the judges vote to stay in above the middling dancers. 20% more than Kara!

I would have thought this would appeal to the BBC as well as people supporting weaker dancers would realise the need to vote plenty to keep in their particular homunculous.

Disclaimer - the charcters mentioned above are pure fiction and are in no way meant to depict characters real or otherwise.

I would prefer it if in the results show they read out who was safe until we got to the bottom two, then reopened the phone lines for about ten minutes while they showed a pro dance and a guest singer, then announced who was going out as a result of the second phone vote. That would give the public the chance to save anyone who really got in the bottom two by accident, because they were overlooked rather than because the public wanted them out.

But definitely keep the phone vote. Not that I can vote mind you, but that's another story.

Perhaps Vince Cable should call for Proportional Representation in the voting, not sure how you could implement in a telephone vote. :=)