This year’s Melodi Grand Prix kicked off on the 16th of January where the two automatic finalists – TIX and KEiiNO presented their songs, and the first two semi final duels were held where Blasemafian feat. Hazel won their ticket for the Final. Last Saturday the second semi final was held, which was won by Raylee, and now NRK confirmed to the Norwegian portal VG that some voting problems were discovered in the semis.

During the Final of last year’s Melodi Grand Prix the voting crashed in the first round, and the results could not be used which resulted with a back-up jury votes being the ones to decide which of the finalists are going to make it to the top four. In order to avoid the same thing happening again, NRK’s technical department has done major changes to the system, but new problems have now been uncovered in the semi finals.

Inge Thorud in front of NRK stated:

We discovered this weekend that some with old phones or operating systems (older generations of iOS and Android) could experience problems with the voting. The scope has not been significant, and proportionally so low that it has not affected the outcome.

We closely monitor all of our systems and we have looked through our logs, and the extent of the error is small. We have received a large number of votes through all the duels in these first two semi finals, and our systems receive votes as planned.

The error also does not constitute a geographical bias, as it is representative of the whole country. The deviation has been adjusted, and will no longer be a problem for the vote.

NRK confirmed that these issues faced in the voting cannot be compared to the voting issues which they have faced in the last year’s final, which resulted in the entire voting in the first round being anulled. Thorud also confirmed:

This is about being able to support as many browsers and mobile phones as possible. This error was small and did not affect results in any way. But we want these people to be able to participate in the vote in the future.

The third semi final is set to take place this Saturday, where four more acts are going to compete for one place that leads to the final, and another direct finalist – Kaja Rode will present her song “Feel Again”. Let us know which of the four semi finalists is YOUR personal favorite by voting in our poll here:

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