It was the controversies over televoting that accompanied the last evening of the Sanremo Festival, with the final won by Angelina Mango ahead of Geolier who was among the most voted by viewers. Many had complained about inefficiencies on the system used by Rai, with several complaints of rejected votes or for which the registration confirmation message never arrived. Regulations in hand, Rai never disclosed the details of the televoting. But Striscia la Notizia and Codacons were in the lead in putting pressure on Viale Mazzini for greater transparency. And the consumer association itself had made a complaint, which would now be accepted as Carlo Rienzi’s organization explains in a note: «Rai will have to provide Codacons and the Association of Radio and Television Services Users with all the telephoto data relating to the Sanremo Festival 2024, among those that have not already been published online by the network”.
The appeal on Sanremo televoting
The Commission for access to the administrative documents of the Presidency of the Council gave the green light. Codacons recalls that the Sanremo final was «characterized by some disruptions and technical problems that had affected the telephoto system, Codacons together with Assourt had presented a formal request for access to Rai requesting all the data on the votes expressed by the individual members of the press room and radio juries; valid votes collected through televoting. Those invalidated and the related motivation; the data regarding any votes cast by the public from home and not collected by the system due to technical disruptions”.
What is not known about televoting data
However, Rai did not want to disclose the details on televoting requested by Codacons, not considering that information to be of public interest. The consumer association then appealed, which has now been accepted. The objective would not have been to «know the percentages of votes obtained by the artists competing in Sanremo 2024 through the various juries – explains the association – because these data are already public and accessible to all. What we want to know, and what Rai will now have to tell us, is how many votes were invalidated or not collected due to the technical problems recorded during the final evening of the Festival”.
