Eurovision Scoring Causes Confusion For One Jury Member

If you watched this year’s Eurovision Song Contest (whether you got into it as much as we did or not), you’ll know that they introduced a new tension-building system into the results stage of the competition.

Instead of revealing the results all at once, each country’s jury revealed their votes first, before the televote results were revealed.

Jamala, who won Eurovision for Ukraine. Copyright [IBL/REX/Shutterstock]

However, as tense as it was for us, it seems the new system confused one member of the jury who ended up handing out the wrong amount of points.

Unlike the public vote, where we simply phone up to vote for who we’d like to see win, the jury members have to rank the 26 competing songs from 1 to 26 - 1 being their favourite and 26 being their least.

According to Digital Spy though, Hilda Heick from the Danish jury got it the wrong way around and gave Ukraine, who went on to win the contest, 12 points instead of zero as she had originally intended. Without Hilda’s scores, Ukraine would actually have received nil points from Denmark’s jury.

Australia, who Hilda meant to score as her favourites, ended up with 10 points from that jury rather than 12.

UK’s entry Joe and Jake. Copyright [BBC]

Speaking about her error, she told Danish tabloid BT: “My heart stopped… When you realise you’ve done something wrong, it’s really mortifying. When I saw the other [jury member’s votes], I could see that I had voted the opposite way to them.”

Hilda added: “It is my great mistake and I admit it honestly, but I want to emphasise that I am not senile yet, although several write on Facebook that I should retire and keep me away from everything, and that I don’t know anything.“

But don’t worry - had Hilda scored correctly, the result would still see Ukraine in the winning position.