The request was presented to the Commission for access to the administrative documents of the Presidency of the Council after Rai had refused to provide data on the votes invalidated or not collected due to televoting malfunctions during the Festival final
by Rolling Stone
Photo: Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images
While we are sailing towards the new edition under the artistic direction of Carlo Conti, the Sanremo Festival looks back to February this year, because «Rai will have to provide Codacons and the Association of Radio and Television Services Users with all the data on the relative televoting at the Sanremo Festival 2024, among those that have not already been published online by the network”. This was requested by Codacons, after the Commission for access to administrative documents of the Presidency of the Council accepted the appeal presented by the consumer association.
But what are we referring to? On the final evening, during which, you may remember, there were problems with the functioning of the televoting, reported by the competing artists on their social profiles while they encouraged their followers to vote for them. As Codacons states, «in the aftermath of the last episode of the Festival, characterized by some disservices and technical problems that had affected the televoting system, Codacons together with Assourt had presented a formal request for access to Rai requesting all the data on votes cast by individual members of the press room and radio juries; valid votes collected through televoting; those invalidated and the related reasons; the data regarding any votes cast by the public from home and not collected by the system due to technical disruptions”.
A request that Rai had denied, as it would not have been, in their assessment, data of public interest. Codacons and Assourt therefore appealed to the Access Commission, which ruled in favor of the latter. Adnkronos writes that, justifying its decision, the body of the Presidency of the Council considered that «the indication of the link for consulting the documents published on the institutional website of the administration is equivalent to access. If there is documentation among that request that has not been published, Rai will have to allow access since the request of today’s appellants falls within the scope of the statutory purposes of the associations themselves, in relation to the interests of the consumers that they represent”.
Carlo Rienzi, president of Codacons, declared that «our request was not aimed at knowing the percentages of votes obtained by the artists competing in Sanremo 2024 through the various juries, 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”.
