It appears that a second incident has occurred where the votes of a jury member have been recorded in reverse. In this case the juror in question is Jitka Zelenková, the chairperson of the jury from the Czech Republic for her votes in the first semi final.
Since the EBU released the full details of all jury voting at the conclusion of the contest, Jitka’s votes have appeared suspicious. In the first semi final Jitka awarded Slovenia’s entry last place in her ranking compared to her other four counterparts in the Czech jury that all ranked Slovenia as first.
Additionally, her votes had Portugal at the top of her ranking, whereas two of the jury members from Czech Republic had the Portuguese entry ranked in last place. It is believed that had her votes been calculated correctly then it would have changed the Czech jury votes and in fact Poland would have qualified for the Grand Final over Belarus who finished in 10th place.
Moving forward to the final, Jitka then voted Slovenia as her sixth favourite and Estonia as her fourth favourite. These are the two highest ranked countries in her list that qualified through the first semi final. In the first semi final she had these two countries ranked the lowest of the ones that managed to qualify with Estonia in 14th and Slovenia in 16th.
This is the second juror this year under question after the same incident seems to have occurred with Lina Hedlund. The singer, who was a member of the Swedish jury appears to have ranked songs in semi-final two backwards. The singer who in the final ranked the Netherlands as her favourite, had the same entry last place in her rankings in Semi-Final Two. Lina also had Switzerland second in the Grand Final, but second last in Semi-Final Two.
This would not be the first time that jurors at the Eurovision Song Contest, has ranked their favourite entries back to front. Danish juror Hilda Heick, revealed to the press that she ranked the entries back to front. This resulted in Ukraine receiving 12 points in the final at Eurovision 2016, instead of Australia.
