Dancing With The Stars (U.S. TV Series) - Scoring and Voting Procedure

Scoring and Voting Procedure

In seasons one and two, only the overall ranking between competitors by the judges and the public was relevant. In season three and all subsequent seasons, the scoring system has made the exact scores relevant as well.

The scoring begins with the judges' marks. Originally, Each judge gives a numeric score from 1–10, for a total score from 3–30. The scoring changed in season 15. Now judges can give scores from 0.5-10.0, for a total score from 1.5-30.0. When multiple performances are scored, only the cumulative total counts. The contestants' "judges' shares" are calculated as the percentage of the total number of points awarded to all contestants that evening. (For example, if a team earned 20 points on a night when the judges awarded 200 points, their judges' share would be 20/200 = 10%.) This percentage is then added to the percentage of North American votes received by each contestant. The bottom two couples are identified in the results show, and the couple with the lowest combined total gets eliminated. Season eight added an occasional "dance-off," in which contestants could re-do one of their dances, in an effort to improve their judges' score. This might be discontinued due to the eliminated couple always scoring higher than or equivalent to the couple that was saved.

Public voting is conducted via a toll-free number, the ABC web site, and, most recently, text messages; contestants can vote during and immediately after each performance show. The maximum number of votes per voter per medium is equal to the number of couples performing that night, or five votes, whichever is larger. In April 2010 it was revealed that dancer Kate Gosselin had e-mailed friends and family asking them to vote as many as ten times each. In November 2010, the Washington Post reported that online voting appeared not to require a valid email address, and accordingly that a large number of votes apparently could be cast by one person.

In several cases where ESPN coverage of Monday Night Football airs instead on an ABC affiliate in an NFL team's home market, the program is delayed to air immediately after that station's local news, and a voting window confined only to the area codes of the pre-empted market is opened up to allow affected viewers to still put their votes in for the competition, though this is on a market-by-market basis (in some markets, an alternate sister station or digital subchannel carries the program live as scheduled).

Seasons one and three featured only two celebrities in the final week instead of three.