‘I Wanted to Sing, but Was Asked to Organise the Voting System’
The first Intervision song contest recently came to an end in Moscow. The winner was the Vietnamese entrant, Đức Phúc. The voting system for the contest was developed by Fuad Aleskerov, a renowned mathematician, expert in game theory and decision-making, and Distinguished Professor at HSE University. He shared the details with the HSE News Service.
‘I wanted to sing, but was asked to organise the voting system,’ says Fuad Aleskerov. He explained that the task was to modify the system so as to reduce the risk of jury preferences being distorted.
Fuad Aleskerov
According to the scholar, the system he proposed was based on the Borda method. This is a preferential voting system introduced in 1770 by Jean-Charles de Borda. It was designed to take voters’ preferences into account more carefully when there are many candidates. The method works by expressing the voting results in the form of points scored by each candidate, with each voter ranking the contestants strictly in order of preference.
‘This system has since been modified, in particular at the beginning of the 21st century,’ notes the HSE professor. It was also modified for the Intervision contest.
At Intervision, each jury member ranked the participants according to their preferences after the performances, from first place (absolute favourite) to last (22nd). It was forbidden to evaluate contestants from one’s own country. The system then converted the rankings into points according to the following formula: 1st place—29 points, 2nd—25 points, 3rd—22 points, 4th—20 points, 5th—18 points. After 5th place the points decreased step by step, with a difference of one point. Thus, the contestant placed 6th received 17 points, 7th—16 points, 18th—5 points, and 22nd place—1 point.
The final ranking was determined by summing up the jury members’ points.