Viewers Will Be Casting Votes For Miss America Series Of 900 Numbers Will Allow Balloting

For the first time in the Miss America pageant’s 75-year history, TV viewers will be able to vote for their favorite contestant.

During Saturday’s telecast on NBC, viewers sitting at home will be able to call telephone numbers shown on the screen and voice their choice from among the 10 semifinalists as if they were sitting in Atlantic City serving as the competition’s “eighth judge.”

“This will be television history,” said Leonard Horn, the Miss America Organization’s chief executive officer. Last year, viewers were given the opportunity to call in and vote as to whether the pageant should keep, or drop, the traditional swimsuit competition. Nearly 900,000 calls were received, with 79 percent voting in favor of keeping the parade of suits.

Horn said this year’s viewers will be selecting only from the 10 semifinalists, with their choices helping to decide who the five finalists will be. The seven judges will then take over and choose Miss America and the runners-up from the top five.

However, residents of the 10 states represented by the semifinalists will not be able to participate in the call-in vote. Horn said that’s intended to level the playing field, ensuring that no one contestant would possess an unfair advantage based on the size and potential votes cast by viewers from her home state.

The solution was designed by Miss America officials and approved by NBC executives to maintain fairness in the pageant’s judging process.

“Because there’s never been a mass-calling event of this magnitude on television before, we knew that, above all, we had to make the process fair to both contestants and viewers,” Horn said.

Here’s how the call-in will work: AT&T will provide 10 different 900 numbers, one for each semifinalist. Each vote will be counted as soon as the call is connected; only one vote per phone number will be counted.

Each call will cost 50 cents. Any proceeds generated above the amount necessary to operate the system will go to charity and the Miss America Scholarship Fund.

Once the phone lines are closed, the public’s votes will be translated into contestant scores and tabulated along with the seven judges’ scores. Because contestants are scored on a 10-point scale, the contestant who receives the most call-in votes will be awarded the full 10 points.

The remaining nine contestants will be assigned a whole-number score between one and 10 based on the number of votes they receive as a percentage of the top vote getter’s total.