According to Eurovision PR Manager Duška Vučinić-Lučić, new voting rules have been introduced due to the known domination of Eastern European countries, to give an equal chance to all contestants. In the past years, there were complaints because creation of a large number of countries in Eastern and South-eastern Europe enabled their domination at the Eurovision Song Contest.
As per the new Eurovision rules, and due to the fact that there are two semi-finals, only participants in each of the semis and 2 of the Big Four countries, plus the hosting country, decided by draw, get to vote in each of the semi-finals.
Nine finalists from the semi-finals are decided by audience, while a tenth one is chosen by national expert juries. Each participating country has an expert jury consisting of people from the music industry or music lovers and their names remain unknown so that they can not be influenced. A song that gets the biggest number of votes from the jury from 43 countries, and which has not already been chosen by the public votes, goes to the final.
The principle is not applicable for the Eurovision final where only the public votes will be deciding on the winner.
How many times can we vote?
During the fifteen minute voting period at both of the semi-finals and at the Eurovision final, the audience can call or send SMS maximum 20 times from the same telephone number to vote for their favorite Eurovision entry (and, of course, the voters can not vote for their own country).
Eurovision Voting System (read more)