Online voting for competitive awards
Some high profile programmes may be built around the voting process for a public award.
We must take particular care about the robustness and integrity of online votes for competitive awards from the earliest stages in order to protect the integrity of the programmes around which they are built. A great deal may ride on the result for participants; there may be a life changing opportunity given as a prize. Or in other cases, lobbying or campaigning organisations may have a strong interest in the outcome of the result.
We should ensure that the robustness of the online voting mechanism matches the vote's editorial significance, and that we undertake additional checks where necessary. Output which relies on online voting should normally be based on a vote run or directly commissioned by the BBC.
Some votes may not be suitable to run online. We should allow enough time in the period between closing the online vote and announcing the result for the votes to arrive, be processed and checked. We should also consider carefully whether to announce running totals before the final verified result.
We should normally publish rules when running votes so that, for example, we can disqualify for cheating or fraud.