[quote=Becky245 What people do is none of anyone else's business. [/QUOTE]

Maybe not, but you posted on an open forum so you are making it other peoples business.

Oh my bad. Let's disregard the fact that you guys went through all the posts to find them to prove your point. But yes, my bad, I accept full responsibility for making it public

It could be asked though were the same tactics used in poll taking too?

I never went through your posts to prove a point.

I was just responding to the hypocrisy that followed.

But if that flew in the face of public opinion as represented by forums, blogs, opinion polls etc , would that even be good PR? I would assume Jay would squeeze the needed 34% on a single vote system from looking at single vote polls, so no harm done. If Katie's PR team had 'bought' her a victory last night, I would have thought the negative publicity and confusion about the result would outweigh the positives. Unless you are thinking of a sustained campaign of fake fans in numerous quantities from the very start of the show? n some ways the internet world is weirdly self-regulating - there is just too much opinion out there to throw a truly random result in the mix.

I do agree that in a closer competition, the potential for PR manipulation is higher. I don't really know how it can be regulated, though. I also doubt that PR teams that can't direct clients to stop doing all the things that wind up audiences and are moaned about frequently (surely not hard) could co-ordinate this!

As several others have said, I don’t think restricting to one vote per person would have changed the result. Jay and Aliona have been leading every poll I have seen by quite some way for quite some time.


As one of the quoted posters, I don’t believe that I tried to ‘skew’ the voting - I simply tried to vote for the couple that I wanted to win, a number of times that reflected how much I wanted them to win.



I agree. I have watched Strictly since season 1, and have voted previously about 5 times in total across series 1-12, whereas this series I have voted multiple times for Jay. I, and many others, have been intensely and unexpectedly moved by a young man’s gentle soul, humility, wit, integrity, kindness, friendship with his dance partner, love of dancing and of course his huge talent for dancing.

I can see the arguments for restricting votes to 1 per person, but I would have been aggrieved if I had not had the opportunity to vote more for Jay than I have previously for other contestants.

Monkseal if it's within the rules then it's valid. And I would have thought that the four finalists would have been on a par with PR, agent, etc... help available to them. None of them stand out to me as having an advantage in that area. That sort of stuff has gone on long before the Internet - back in the days of vinyl the music charts were heavily manipulated by all sorts of record label/music industry shenanigans.

It boils down to whether you're happy with the winner. If you are then block voting is fine. If you're not then it should be banned and anyone trying to block vote should be imprisoned!!

But I'm happy with the winner and I'm happy with a system where people can vote more than once if they feel especially strongly. A system where you can rack up hundreds of free votes in a matter of minutes though? Nope. It's broken. I'm not asking for "one man, one vote" but that's too far.

I have wondered at what stage someone is going to rig a botnet to vote, whether for the kicks or betting purposes.


I advise anyone not to try such statements in a court of law. These words are just not clever enough. People have to understand barristers are highly educated, from the upper percentiles in ability and not only will they see through it, they know how to pick it apart in words for a lay jury.
If you didn't want to skew the result to your will, you wouldn't have made the effort. The more votes you tried to make, the more you were trying to skew the voting.

Block voting happens all the time, it's nothing new, and the reason people spend time block voting is because they know fans of other competitors are doing exactly the same thing. However, strangely it's only Jay supporters who are singled out for criticism though, even to the extent of quoting FM's posts from the appreciation thread. That was quite nasty as well as being one-sided.

There will always be block voting on all sides so it probably all evens itself out in the end. People are entitled to vote for whom they want, Jay is very popular, he's a beautiful dancer and is a very likeable young man. He was the favourite from early on so it's not at all surprising that he won. I don't know why people can't just accept that Jay won and stop trying to find excuses because their favourite didn't win.

Does this mean that all voters are 'trying to skew the voting' then..

I know. I'm with you really on a personal level - I would never do it either. But it is how the fan world works. I've been doing some research into fans of TV dramas who get into so-called 'shipping wars'. The levels of emotional investment make Strictly fans look positively cold. It's a weird old world - and almost totally driven by social media. I suppose all I'm saying (badly) in my posts is that like it or not, it's how voting culture is now. I don't think Jay has experienced anything that isn't going on elsewhere on the Internet, and considerably less so than in some arenas. Strictly is massively civilised really!

I don't know about a matter of minutes - it took me bloody ages. And I've got RSI of the index finger now - can you imagine me explaining that to the GP?!!

If I thought that it might realistically make a difference then I would agree, but I think the outcome would have been the same. However if that were to be introduced (one vote) I wouldn't grumble. Less work for me!! And one less thing for the MF "lunatics" to get their knickers knotted over.

I'm sure there must be some sort of mathematical process/explanation/equation for whether it made a difference, but don't look to me for it!!

By voting at all, you are trying to skew the results to your will, surely?

Well said Maggie. I agree with all of your post.

Maybe it doesn't matter how many times you vote online, toss your cookies, do it again, lather, rinse, repeat because it registers your ip address with your first three votes, so all votes after that are obsolete.

Radio Times

BBC1 Sat- November, 2018

6.40 Strictly Come Dancing

8.20 'Strictly Block Voting-It Takes 2 million' with Tim Berners-Lee, no explanation necessary.

9.30 Strictly Come Court-ing with Judge Rinder, passing judgement on the issues facing vote blockers' in the dock.

10.10 Strictly Come Imprisoning with Theresa May, being tough on 'blockers' and on the causes of 'blocking', with special guest Mary Berry to bake any convicted blocker a cake with a file in it (cause it's all a stitch up).

Dec 20, 2018

Eric Pickles wins Strictly Come Dancing

The only winners in all of this are the producers, mind.

The BBC set the rules.

They supply multiple votes.

Zoe read out a message on ITT about someone voting 56 times for each of 2 celebs. There didn't seem to be a problem with that - in fact it seemed to be acceptable.

They allow multiple votes without limit other than time.

So those are the rules and all celebs will be getting multiple votes.

If they change the rules to 1 vote per person, then there will be something to complain about.

It's like complaining that the winner was 3rd in the judges scores in the final. It doesn't matter what the judges scores were - it says so in the rules.

I thought the rules on the on-line voting page stated you had 3 votes and that's it, are people going by the "you can therefore it's allowed" angle?

Anyway, yes, if they can restrict it they should, as it opens up the possibility of setting up a programme to apply multiple votes to assist betting scams or as said, PR companies manipulating the result. Sure Jay would probably have won without bloc voting as he was popular, but we don't know that for sure - his dancing was probably the worst of the final three on the night and he may have lost votes because of it.

I think it should be like the general election. But ultimately the BBC and show make a lot of money with people calling in their vote(s). For example I used the latest in microwave broad band satellite technology to send my 50 million votes in just a few minutes.

I have no problem with block voting but I stand by what I said in my first post in the thread, people with 200 odd phone votes definitely have more money than sense.

Really? Put Lizzie Armistead or Jessica Ennis-Hill on and watch me go

Multiple voting is as old as ways to vote. My Gran once sent in 10 postcards to Opportunity Knocks for Neil Reid. Even the postman sympathised but couldn't do anything about it.

I'll let you know if I was guilty of a hyperbole when I get my phone bill

Seriously though, if two or three thousand votes from a small superfan club on DS is what won Jay the glitterball it doesn't say much for the level of support for the other contestants does it?

Oh, and thanks to the person who said we're 'not normal' - I shall wear that badge with honour - being 'normal' was never one of my life aspirations!!!!

Can I just ask, if you don't really think it made any difference, why do it and cause yourself RSI and all the stress?

Your post struck me and I wonder if there is a psychological reason (there must be anyway) and it's something to do with proving to the fandom how big of a fan you are or something?