when the person in last place has half the points of the next bottom and yet they still survive (aka Todd and JS on SCD) it suggests the scoring system is wrong.

they say half the votes come from public and half from judges but exactly how many viewers equals one point?

I think a better option would be to vote who you want to get rid of rather than who you want to keep but i guess there's no perfect solution

It doesn't matter. What matters is the percentage of the total votes. This week, the contestant who got the highest percentage of the total votes would have had 10 points, the 2nd highest 9 points etc. These points would then be added to the ones they got from the judges.

In fact this week, as there was a 3 way tie for 4th place (from the bottom), 3 couples got 4 points and Todd only got 1 point. Which only goes to prove that Todd is very popular with the public to get enough votes to end up with more points than Michael who started with 7.

Perhaps the two lowest scorers should automatically be put forward from the skate-off and the audience vote out of those two?

Voting for who you want to go is a bit of an uncomfortable vote. Also you can't guarantee that people won't dislike a particular celebrity for one reason or another and therefore may vote for them in spite of their skating ability.

You'll never perfect the voting system people votes for their Favourites who are possibly not the best skaters,

Well as all those who have gone already had no chance of winning anyway - its a bit academic at the moment.

The voters will come to their senses when a reasonably good skater (eg Zoe) goes leaving the likes of Todd and Coleen still there.

Lets face it - barring a HUGE upset we are looking at a Ray/ Jessica/ possibly Zoe final so the order in which the others go hardly matters

The voting system is fine - although given the arbitrary nature of some of the judges voting I am less worried about people scoring poorly with them avoiding the skate off.

In the end Todd is fun and entertaining and if the public want to vote to keep him in then why not. If there was no viewing public giving it high ratings there would be no Dancing on Ice in the first place!

PS Thankfully at least the DOI judges don't appear to be colluding to ensure celebs get voted out like they do in SCD. Nicky and Karen wouldn't stand for that sort of thing!

If you only want to vote for one skater then you are likely to vote for the one you want to save from the skate off rather than for the best skater.

This week with 4 skaters on equal marks near the bottom I would imagine a lot of people voted for whichever one of those 4 they wanted to save - possibly assuming Michael would be safe as he wasn't one of the 4.

I wouldnt waste my vote on the top scorer/best skater at this stage as they are unlikely to be in the skate off and if they are they are likely to go through on judges vote so no point til it's closer later on.

In fact we are not asked to vote for the best skater but the one we want to save and that's what most people do.

Only later in the series do people start to vote for the best skater as they start to want the best skater to win rather than saving someone they like.

Are we? - I really don't believe the public are voting for Zoe or Jessica in large nos (they are probably the least famous of all the contestants to the average Joe public).

If Todd keeps topping the public vote he will almost certainly avoid the skate off and stay in. I also believe the skate off goes by the time of the semi final.

I wouldn't rule out a Ray vs Todd Bolero final which Todd could win!

That might be true if we watched only the final and not the shows in between.

...as far as we know, seeing as ITV never confirm exactly how the scoring works!

I agree but it has to work something like that or they wouldn't be able to add the public and the judges score together.

Well that cant be right for a starrt. Todd only had 7.5 points and the next 4 had 16. even if todd got 10 giving him 17.5 then the next 2 lowest would have got minimum of 17 and 18 respectively so todd would have been in the bottom 2.

If the judges score is out of 30 its more likely that the public vote is out of 30 too i guess and the pro rata is done from that but even then say he got 33% of all votes that would only given him another 10 points again. i can only think the convert the points into positions and the same with the phone phone so todd comes last in show but 1st in phone ?? to put him 5th overall whereas the bottom 2 maybe only come 6th and 7th in phone vote to push them 8th and 9th overall.??

whatever method i still think that with someone having half of the next lowest scorers votes they show be in skate off automatically and then maybe the GBP only vote for the one to join them.

Time to rethink the scoring system? No.

Time to rethink the ice panel? Yes.

I would keep Karen, Nicky and Robin

I suppose Jason will have to stay

But Ruthie should go- maybe replace her with Anita Harris as has been suggested

Just on a note about the public vote- Michael's vote obviously crashed last night- but Melinda is surely also struggling for public support

Why not replace Ruthie with the winner of the previous series, because she knows exactly what it takes to do well and the progression week by week. She must know so much more than Ruthie - then she can get back to the theatre where she belongs!!!!!