There's an official World Idol website with info on the contestants, judges and hosts. The judge representing Britain is Pete Waterman, and the judge representing America is Simon Cowell!
http://www.worldidol.tv/
The official American Idol site also has info about the voting method.
http://www.idolonfox.com/worldidol/index.htm
Quote:
How is the voting structured?
Each country gets to vote using their own voting systems. The home contestant from each participating country (e.g. Kelly Clarkson in the United States) will automatically start with the highest points (12) awarded from their own country. Viewers from each country will then vote on the remaining ten contestants and once the votes are tallied and the position of each contestant is determined (1st place, 2nd place etc.) points will be awarded in accordance with the Points System below.
Points System:
Home country contestant 12 points
1st place 10 points
2nd place 9 points
3rd place 8 points
4th place 7 points
5th place 6 points
6th place 5 points
7th place 4 points
8th place 3 points
9th place 2 points
10th place 1 point
The points each Idol gets from all of the countries will be tallied and added together by an independent vote management company to determine their overall position in the contest.
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They've gone for a Eurovision style voting method (apart from the home contestant getting top marks automatically) I think the voting system would have been better if the points were alocated in each country based on the percentage of votes for each contestant.
It'll be interesting to see if the voting gets influenced by politics like in Eurovision.