How To Vote For Your Favorite ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Season 28 Teams

Following Bobby Bones’ controversial win during Season 27 of “Dancing With the Stars,” the show has taken a hard look at its voting system, and now, in Season 28, things will be very different for the long-running ABC series.

Despite years of defending their voting process, the results of Season 27, which saw high scoring dancers like Juan Pablo di Pace and Tinashe go home, while Bones and Joe Amabile, who scored consistently lower, stayed in through the final rounds led to some big changes for the newest season. Whereas previously fans would vote both online and by phone following a Monday night broadcast and would see the results of those votes combined with the judges’ scores for that week during the next episode, votes after the broadcast have become a thing of the past.

According to a press release, the show will not consist of a live vote that takes place during each broadcast, with the results tallied and revealed by the end of the episode. The votes will take place only during the live broadcast in the EDT/CDT time zones, but West Coast fans will be able to still vote during that same window.

Those votes will then be combined with the judges’ scores and revealed at the end of the episode, resulting in one team’s elimination. The only time this will not be the case will be during week one of the competition, which does not feature an elimination. During that episode, the live viewing audience will not vote, and only the judges will score the routines. Those scores will carry over into week two and then be combined with the scores for that week’s routines—as well as the live viewer votes for week two.

Fans will have to wait and see if this new live vote process prevents more cases of celebrities who have a larger following moving on despite a lack of dance skills or improvement each week, while those who have exhibited a true knack for dance or who have steadily improved each week are sent home. However, it should quell previous claims the show’s voting system was rigged.

“Dancing With the Stars” Season 28 premieres tonight at 8 p.m. EDT on ABC.