I seem to remember that last year, we could vote to nominate who the replacement housemate was, out of a choice of three - in the end Josh was nominated.

Does anyone know why we haven't been given an option to nominate Sophie and Tim in this year?

Josh wasnt a replacement, just an extra housemate. Claire was a replacement for Nick and she wasnt voted in. It would have been good if we could have chosen though

They must have a different policy for replacing housemates who left without being evicted by the vote.

Remember that when Josh was elected into the house last year it was part of the plan for BB2, whereas what has happened this year with Sophie and Tim was not planned.
Having said that I think we, the public, should be allowed to vote in replacement housemates whatever the reason for replacing.

considering they could have had yet another phone vote, and made even more money, it's amazing they didn't put them to a public vote.

As said, the new HMs have been replacements at relatively short notice - no time to do all the filming and publicity stuff and wait for a phone vote to finish I don't think - that also needs air time and lines to be set up. In the end what does it matter? Aside from looks, the promo videos have been lies, like Sophies - has anyone seen Tim's promo yet?! Clearly he said he had the zilch factor!!!!

How many people do you reckon actually do vote for all those pointless polls on bblb? Its a scam! 25p! and outrage. the other day i saw the results of another pointless poll and the %s were 75/25. so do you think that probably only 4 people vote?

and one of those was a wrong number