DWTS Voting Guide

      Here's a compilation of voting information for the upcoming season. For right now, the most important part is #4 - setting up ABC.com accounts in advance. We can go over the rest as it gets closer to the premiere!    

     

      1. Vote by phone - the phone lines open in your time zone as soon as the show starts and close 60 minutes after it ends. Every available line in your home counts for the allotted number of votes – your landline, your cell phone, your kid’s cell phone, etc. Use them all! 
      
The voting numbers will be released soon - I’ll tweet/plaster Emmitt and Cheryl's everywhere as soon as I know it!

2. Vote by text if you're an AT&T customer - text the word “VOTE” and entering the number that corresponds to the team they want to support. Again, every cell phone can be used for the allotted number of votes, so use ‘em up! (But beware that if you don’t have unlimited texting, it might cost you for each text.)

    

      3. Vote by Facebook - This is new for this year. www.facebook.com/dancingwiththestars.  I’ll give out more info on this as it becomes available, but so far this is all I know about it: According to ABC, "A custom Facebook app sponsored by AT&T will let fans vote, share who they voted for and why, as well as see who friends voted for.”

      4. Vote online at ABC.com - THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW - Online voting at www.ABC.com will be open from the start of each episode on the East Coast (8pm ET usually) and closes at 8 a.m. PT/11 a.m. ET on Tuesday mornings. To vote online, you MUST have your e-mail addresses registered in advance at www.ABC.com. (The number of e-mail addresses that you can register is basically unlimited. I've seen that some people have 20-30, and even up to 50 accounts registered. I’ll leave it at that…) Usually, you get as many votes are there are contestants, so if there are 10 contestants, you’d sign in, vote 10 times for Emmitt and Cheryl, then sign out. Sign in again with another e-mail address, repeat...
    

      ***It used to be that you could vote with all of your e-mail addresses, clear your internet cache, then open a new browser and vote with the same e-mail addresses all over again (Example: Vote using Chrome, clear cache, Vote using same e-mail using Internet Explorer). Supposedly ABC has caught on to this little trick and they throw out those duplicate votes, so I don’t know if I would spend the time on multiple browsers***

THIS voting guide says that you in addition to re-voting with different browers, you can also re-vote on different computers, then do it all again at 8am EST (all with your same set of e-mail addresses). I've never tried that before...

      5. International fans – You can vote online or via Skype during the voting time periods, just convert EST (I always pick New York) to your local time to figure out the voting period.

Here is a Time Zone Converter that is pretty simple to use. Just make the left side say 8:00 PM New York and then put your city in on the right side and hit enter. That will tell you what time you can begin voting. 

If you're registering your e-mail on the ABC website and need a US zip code, here is a helpful webiste: BrainyZip. Just click on a state and it gives you a list of zip codes. 

General Voting Notes –

You usually get as many votes as there are contestants. So 10 contestants = 10 votes per phone line, 10 votes per text, 10 votes per Facebook, 10 votes per e-mail address. Multiply that by however many phone lines and e-mail addresses and you can see that voting can get to be a full time job :)

It’s generally best not to split up your votes between contestants. If you split up your 10 votes and give 5 to Emmitt and 5 to Sabrina but I give all 10 to Apolo, then Apolo is safe and Emmitt and Sabrina are in the bottom two. Granted, you can’t control how other people vote, but at least we know that we did all we could for Emmitt and Cheryl…And obviously I would be giving all 10 to Emmitt, but you know, just as an example… :D

NEVER assume that Emmitt and Cheryl are safe. We know that they’re going to rock it on the dance floor, but even when they’re in the top spot, we still have to do our part and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. Shocking eliminations are no fun for teams that are sent home. 

If you have any questions or problems, PLEASE comment or Tweet to me (@TeamEmmittSmith) and I will do what I can to help! 

Also, if you're a veteran voter and there's anything that I've missed or any tips you have, please let me know and I'll add it to the guide!

Happy voting!

Here are my sources for this guide...WetPaint and PureDWTS