Totallympics Annual International Song Contest 2015 Charter and Official Rulebook

Rule 1: Eligibility of Songs:
 

• 1(a) All Songs released either as a Single or an Original Song featured on an Album for the first time since the 1st January 2014.

• 1(b) All Songs must be Original to either the Artist(s) or the Nation for which they are participating.

• 1(c) Songs which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest or other such International Song Contests are excluded from competing in our Contests. Equally, Songs which competed in previous editions of our Contests are excluded from future editions.

Rule 2: Eligibility of Artists:
 

• 2(a) The chosen Artist(s) must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation.

• 2(b) In the case of Bands or Groups, at least 50% of the Band must be from the Nation which they are participating for or they should have more or equal association with that Nation.
   

• 2(c) For the purposes of these Contests and to avoid unecessary confusion, we will use the same criteria for issues of nationality as that used by the International Olympic Committee. For example, artists from Northern Ireland may be chosen to represent either Ireland or the United Kingdom. In such circumstances there should be private communication between both national juries before selecting the artists in question and it will be a matter solely for those national juries concerned.

Rule 3: Contest Format:
 

• 3(a) All editions of the Song Contests will be a straight-forward Grand Final format (without Semi-Finals or Preliminaries). The only exception will be in the event that there are 40 or more Nations registering to participate in the Contest.

• 3(b) In the scenario of 40 or more Nations participating in the Contest , it will be at the discretion of the Host Nation whether or not to conduct a straight-forward Grand-Final or whether to introduce a Semi-Final system (consisting of 2 Semi-Finals with an even number of Nations in each where possible. There will be a Random Draw to determine which Songs participate in which Semi-Finals).

• 3(c) In the case of Semi-Finals or Preliminaries, all Nations will have to participate in these stages (there will be no automatic qualifiers for the Grand Final) and at least 28 Nations must be advanced to the Grand Final event.

Rule 4: Scoring System and Tie-Break Scenarios:
 

• 4(a) The Scoring system will always use the same format as that used in the Eurovision Song Contest (points will be awarded as follows....12 points given to song of 1st preference, 11 points to 2nd preference, 10 points for 3rd prefrence and so on with the points value decreasing by one point each time with 1 point being awarded to the song of 12th preference.

• 4(b) In the event of a tie between 2 or more Songs in the overall scoreboard after all the votes have been announced, they shall be separated by the following criteria (in order of precedence):

The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be....

(i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of National Juries.

(ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points.

(iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved.

(iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Song which received points from the greatest number of individual jury members excluding the jury members from the Nations involved in the tie-break situation.

If the Songs remain tied after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then the songs in question will be considered to have tied for that position and will not be separated by any other means in the Final Ranking.




Rule 5: Confirmation of Participation:
 

• 5(a) In order to participate in the Song Contest, Nations must Register their interest to compete within the required specified time-frame. This window must be open for at least 20 days in order to allow enough time for Nations to makes their interest known.

• 5(b) Confirmation of Participation will be subject to the following rules:

(i) All Nations must take part in the Voting process in order to participate in the Song Contest. Any Nations that have Registered to compete and submit an entry but do not Vote will be automatically disqualified.

(ii) If there is corruption discovered in any way during the Voting process then the Nation of the offending national jury member(s) will be under investigation with a view to potential disqualification.

(iii) If corruption by a National Jury is discovered after the competition, then that Nation may be disqualified from future contests and their performance at the competition in question may be placed under review or even annulled.

• 5(c) Only Nations that have Registered a song/artist to participate in the Song Contest may take part in the official Voting process.

Rule 6: Running Order of National Jury Voting:
 

• 6(a) A Random Draw must always be conducted in order to produce the Order of National Jury Voting during the Grand Final.

• 6(b) This Random Draw must be made available for other users to watch live so that it can be verified.

• 6(c) The Order in which National Juries will vote must never be changed from the result of the Order created by the Random Draw except in the following circumstances:

(i) If a National Jury is drawn to announce their Votes outside of reasonable local hours in that Nation (reasonable hours for the purposes of these Contests are determined as anytime between 09:30am - 22:30pm local time in the Nation in question), then that National Jury is eligble to ask for a Swap in the Order of their Voting.

(ii) Swaps will always be sought firstly with other Nations that are eligible for a Swap due to awkward voting hours. If there is more than one Nation eligible for Swaps, the process will always begin with the first eligible Nation according to the result of the already conducted Random Draw which was used to determine the Order of National Jury Voting. If there are no obvious Swaps then a Random Draw should beconducted to decide which Nation will complete the Swap. The Nations placed in the final 5 of the original jury order will be excluded from this random draw as their position will be secure unless they are eligible for a Swap. Swaps with Nations that would result in further Swaps needed will not be permitted and thus those Nations are also excluded from that Random Draw.

Rule 7: National Jury Voting System:
 

• 7(a) National Juries can consist of any number of members (one or more) providing that those members are from that Nation.

• 7(b) Voting must be carried out in secret (Votes sent by Private Message and not shared between Users) and must only be made public when called upon to do so by the Host during the Grand Final.

• 7(c) Votes from National Juries consisting of more than one member will have their Votes combined so that they form a single set of results. This set of results will then become the official National Jury Vote of that Nation. If there is a tie between one or more Songs after the jury members have completed their votes then the following tie-break rules will be used (in order of precedence):

The Song that will be declared the winner of the tie-break situation shall be....

(i) The Song which received points from the greatest number of Jury members.

(ii) If there is still a tie, after (i) then then Song which received the greatest number of 12 Points.

(iii) If there is still a tie after (i) and (ii) then the Song which received the greatest number of 11 Points, and proceeding to calculate the total number of 10 points, 9 points, 8 points and so on until the tie-break is resolved.

(iv) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii) and (iii) then the Votes shall be analysed to see if there is a "free jury member(s)" remaining who has yet to make their preference known. A "free jury member" is a member of the National Jury in question that did not award any points to any of the Songs that are involved in the tie-break situation. As a result, they have not yet made clear which of the tied Songs they prefer and as such they will be asked to break the tie-break situation by directly choosing which Song they prefer. This tie-break rule can only come into effect if there are 3 or more members on a National Jury and can only be used if there is a free jury member after Voting. There may be more than one "free jury member" and all such members must be asked to break the tie-break situation.

(v) If there is still a tie after (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) then a Random Draw will determine which Song wins the tie-break situation. This Random Draw will take place in secret and will be made available to witness live by the National Jury in question and the Host.

• 7(d) National Juries are excluded from Voting for their own Nation.

Rule 8: Hosting of Song Contests:
 

• 8(a) The Hosting duties of the Song Contest will be awarded to the Winning Nation of the previous edition of that Contest.

• 8(b) If the previous Winning Nation cannot undertake the Hosting duties for any reason, then the Hosting duties will then be awarded to the Runner-Up of the previous edition of the Contest. If they too cannot undertake the responsibility then the process of finding a Host will continue to work through those final rankings of the previous edition until a Host is found.

• 8(c) If a Host still could not be found then all Nations will be invited if they wish to make their interest known and a Host will be selected from those interested parties.

• 8(d) Upon carrying out the Hosting duties, the Host must allow a minimum total of 20 days for Nations to register their interest to participate in the contest and to select their representatives.

• 8(e) The Host must allow a minimum total of 10 days for National Juries to Vote during the specified Voting window.

• 8(f) The Host must Vote in secret and send those Votes to a neutral party before opening up the Voting window for all National Juries. This is to ensure that the Votes of the Host are not influenced by the Votes of other National Juries.

• 8(g) In the spirit of fair play the Host is forbidden from sharing confidential information with other Users.

• 8(h) The Host must abide by the same rules which govern the actions of all other Users and Song Contest Participants.