Please forgive me if this has been discussed before, but would voting to get someone out be a fairer method. I've tried to think of any disadvantages to doing this, and all I can come up with that there might be less votes cast.
What do you think
There has got to be a better way than we have got now unless it is only about generating money. I think there has been so much argument and counter argument about what SCD is all about and respective positions are firmly entrenched, that we have reached the point, that not much
new can be said about it.
I love SCD but it's going a bit sour.----such a shame!

I can see why you're saying this, in one way it would be fairer, but it would mean less money raised for Children In Need, because generally people will vote more often to keep their favourite in than to get someone they don't like out. And I think - just a guess - that the voting would be more unfair - lots of people would vote Kelly and Brendon off, for example, or possibly Gabby for the whole competitive thing and you'd end up with the inoffensive people not massively disliked by anyone.

They just need to get rid of the dance off - people didn't vote for Gabby because they thought the judges would save her.

I have a feeling that the reason that Gabby and Penny ended up as bottom two was due to sympathy/protest voting for others and the dislike for Gabbys competitiveness and Pennys supposed favouritism.

There could be a number of very good voting alternatives but like most viewers I guess its all about money and where's no more effective way of generating the cash than having th voting the way it is. Just read one post where the viewer confirms that he/she not only votes for Kate regardless of dancing ability but also spends £10 each voting night !!!

A vote on the bottom two would work...and it should be a vote to evict not save...generates more ££££.

There are pros and cons for both so-called 'negative' and 'positive' voting. Unfortunately the issue is clouded by the IMO misleading terminology and the psychological dimension. Some people would be resistant to 'negative' voting. However, I would argue that so-called 'negative' voting is often more positive than so-called 'positive' voting because a vote to eliminate one contestant is positive for all the others whereas a vote to save one contestant is negative for all the others.

In this day and age there's no reason why you couldn't have two phone lines for each couple - one to save and one to eliminate - with the net votes counting towards the 'viewer' points.

Of course a key consideration is which system yields the most votes and hence the most revenue.

I was going to start a thread on this. Positive voting is mainly a problem early on, when most people want most dancers to stay, and there isn't a good way of doing this. The results that come out of it are often surprising and not really what people wanted, because no one votes for everyone but one.

Negative voting for the first four weeks would indeed tend to remove the weaker dancers (people just wouldn't try for Gabby, Penny or Kelly). The Beeb will never go for it though, as it would bring a negative flavour to a fluffy show. 'The most people wanted you to go' is too harsh for SCD.

Other possibilities:
Staggered positive voting
This would require the second live show back
Some of the people going through are announced at the start of the second show whilst lines remain open. This allows a bit more focus on those who are in trouble but don’t deserve to be.
Pro: Gives the public more understanding, hence more control.
Con: Might cut the tension a bit if some of those apparently in trouble go through early; gives the second show a weird structure.

Dual voting
You can vote either for who you want to stay or who you want to go.
Pro: Gives the public the most control, probably.
Con: Complicated, and still a bit of a negative feel to it.

Some good ideas to think about. You see the thing that worries me about the present voting system is that its heavily biased to those who don't regard SCD as a dancing competition and all the time it exists we are going to have these crazy(according to me)results.
Somehow there must be a compromise solution that appeals to both camps.

Do those people who only vote for personalities have any ideas, or presumably you would like to keep things as they are.

The voting shambles this year is yet another example of the BBC not having the brains to think things through.
If they MUST have the dance-off, then the judges award their scores as per usual, but the scores are used only for providing a 'judges leaderboard'. The bottom two couples are decided by public vote alone as in Maria, and Joseph. (For all its faults even the X-Factor uses this system.)
And if the judges decision is a split vote of 2 each, then it goes to the lowest public vote.
I can't think of another TV show where the judges have the power to allocate one set of points, and then they also have the final say in who goes. No wonder the GBP do their best to upset the applecart.

One other change I'd like to see next year would be to have nobody voted off in the first week (the show could either be lengthened by a week or two couples could be disposed of in week two). That would give all the couples more of a chance to show what they could do, with two different dances instead of being judged on just one that maybe didn't suit them. It should help to overcome the problem of sympathy voting that happened with Kate this year, as nobody could then complain that the contestants hadn't had a fair chance to prove themselves.