(Hi, DS. Long-time lurker finally creating an account here.)

Personally I feel that a better system would be to combine the judges and audience votes as done currently, but for the judges to then decide between the bottom two (whether with or without repeating the dances) based on their overall performance, rather than that dance alone. This way, bad eliminations because of a dance that didn't suit them quite so much would be prevented. Who's with me..?

The judges change the rules of the dance off to suit themselves anyway so probably not even though its a good idea

In the past they have eliminated someone because of

their past poor performances (although they had produced better dances in the last couple of weeks and/or were up against a judges pet)
their lack of potential for the future (because they had a couple of bad weeks and/or were up against a judges pet)
the dance performed in the dance-off (because neither of the bottom 2 were particular favourites).

Hi and welcome, I'm happy you de-lurked, but I have to totally disagree.

All the problems this year have been because the public perceives that the judges have too much power, you then want to give them more?

The premise of the show is that the public decides their winner. Well they won't if the judges have the final choice every week, would anything have changed if they had the choice of choosing through potential or performance or considering their week-by-week performance? I really don't think so and I then think the public would have been even more unhappy because if the judges had had a free choice, I don't think much would have changed.

I think the only sensible option is to just have the bottom combined score goes, rather than the judges' choosing. Unfortunately, the trust between the public and the judges, for all sorts of reasons, is beyond repair.

maybe the judges should only rank after everyone one has danced - they can comment afer the dances but just place everyone at the end of the show before the public vote

I actually think that the only two things that need to take place are that if 2 or more couples are given the same score by the judges, the judges should rank them, like happened in the Christmas special, so for example in the semi, it could have gone

Rachel 3
Lisa 2
Tom 1

even though Rachel and Lisa scored the same amount of marks, the judges discuss and see which one they want to place top of the leaderboard.

And then bottom with judges and public's combined score goes.