Why the X Factor Voting System is Broken

Another weekend of X Factor dominance of television, Facebook and Twitter has passed, and again pundits and fans alike are a little confused by the voters choice, leaving seemingly quality acts to fight it out to stay in the show, but why are we consistantly surprised by the bottom two?

Let me start by saying that, yes, this is probably not the best week to write this article; obviously something about Rachel Adedeji was not right, this being her third time in the bottom two, and I don't think anyone could argue Lloyd Daniels was particularly amazing on Saturday night. On a pure singing basis it's clear that John and Edward, or JEdward or whatever you want to call them, should have been booted weeks ago, but clearly they are, for the time being, exempt in the view of the public.

Take the previous week, however, when Miss Frank and Danyl Johnson were pitted against each other in the final two. Personally I was glad to see Miss Frank go; they were certainly not my cup of tea, but Danyl Johnson not only performed brilliantly that night, but is also probably the best singer in the cometition and almost certainly the best male vocalist, and yet he was voted second to bottom. Perhaps it's Cheryl Coles' seeming vendetta against him that swayed the public to vote for others, but therein lies the problem.

You see, X Factor Votes are not for the act they want to see leave the show, the votes count towards who the public want to stay. In a competition where there are, to start with, twelve competitors this system does not work. Contestants like Olly Murs and Lucie Jones, who are firm fan favourites and very good performers may be safe bets to get through to last few competitors, but less popular acts are the ones that suffer here.

The average X Factor voter will, in all likeliness, vote for one or two acts that they really want to go through. This doesn't mean that want the remaining ten, nine, etc contestants to go out, it means they don't want to spend a fortune on voting for contestants on a Reality TV Show. We know that the public, when given the opportunity to vote can make strange choices, Michelle McManus from Pop Idol for example, but the X Factor voting system is set up to punish the middle ground. Acts like Rachel Adedeji, Rikki Loney and Danyl Johnson are fighting an uphill battle against the popularity of contestants like Olly Murs, Joe McElderry and Stacey Solomon.

The simple solution is for Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and co to put their heads together and convince the producers to change the voting system to a "vote for who you want OUT" system. That way, there is no doubt who the public want to boot out of the X Factors. Maybe it's intentional though, maybe the producers are playing on those viewers that WILL vote fifty times for all their favourite contestants in order to keep them in, unfortunately those viewers are a minority.

Do they really want to follow up great pop stars like Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke with JEdward?