Why Were DWTS Online Votes Thrown Out? What Happened During the Season 35 Premiere

Dancing With the Stars opened Season 35 with an elimination on the line from the very first night, making viewer voting unusually important during the September 15 premiere. That plan became complicated less than half an hour into the live broadcast when the show’s online voting system stopped working.

The problem continued long enough that DWTS ultimately abandoned online voting for the entire night rather than trying to restore it midway through the competition. Viewers were told to use text voting instead, while votes submitted through the website were removed from consideration.

Related: Why Are the DWTS Season 35 Scores So Low? The Tougher Premiere Judging Explained

DWTS Online Voting Went Down Early in the Premiere

The issue became public shortly after Tyler Cameron and Sharna Burgess completed the second competitive routine of the night. Julianne Hough interrupted the live broadcast with an update, telling viewers that voting through ABC’s website was currently unavailable and asking them to use the show’s text-voting option instead.

Reports from viewers attempting to access the voting site included an error page, while the show continued with the remaining performances. Hough initially suggested that the problem might be temporary and said viewers would receive another update later in the broadcast.

The timing mattered because DWTS voting takes place during the live East Coast and Central time broadcast. Fans cannot simply wait until after the episode to cast votes once the performances have finished.

Why Did DWTS Throw Out All Online Votes?

The online system was still experiencing problems later in the episode. Alfonso Ribeiro then announced that DWTS would disregard online voting completely for Night 1 and count text votes instead.

Ribeiro described the change as applying to that night only. The show did not provide a detailed technical explanation for what caused the website failure, so there is no confirmed evidence that the problem involved anything beyond the technical issues acknowledged during the broadcast.

Discarding the online votes also avoided a situation in which some viewers had access to the website for part of the episode while others did not. However, DWTS did not publicly state that fairness was the specific reason for the decision, so the clearest explanation remains the one given on air: the online voting problems persisted and the show switched to text-only voting.

Did Online Votes Cast Before the Crash Count?

No. Ribeiro’s announcement made clear that online votes were being thrown out for the night, rather than simply suspending new voting after the website went down.

That meant viewers who had successfully submitted online votes before the technical failure could not rely on those votes being included in the result. Anyone eligible to use the SMS system needed to vote again by text if they wanted their choices counted.

Under the premiere format, the judges’ scores were combined with the valid viewer vote to determine which male celebrity was in danger of leaving on Night 1. The technical problem therefore affected one of the two components used to determine the first elimination of Season 35.

Canadian DWTS Viewers Were Hit Hardest by the Voting Problem

The voting outage created a particular problem for Canadian viewers.

Before the premiere, the official voting information said that online voting would be available to eligible viewers in the United States, its territories and Canada. SMS voting, however, was limited to viewers using participating U.S. wireless carriers.

Once DWTS discarded the online votes and moved to text voting only, Canadian fans no longer had the same alternative available to U.S. viewers. The technical failure therefore did more than make voting inconvenient for that audience. It effectively removed the method they had been given to participate in Night 1.

The show had not announced a separate Canadian voting alternative during the broadcast.

Was the DWTS Voting System Changed for Season 35?

No new voting format caused the problem. Season 35 was supposed to continue using the familiar combination of online and SMS voting during the live broadcast.

What was unusual was the structure of premiere week. The eight male celebrities performed on September 15, with one elimination scheduled at the end of Night 1. The eight female celebrities were then scheduled to make their debuts on September 16, followed by a separate elimination.

That format gave the voting malfunction greater consequences than it might have had during a non-elimination premiere. The men had only one performance to earn both judges’ points and viewer support before someone was sent home.

Will Online Voting Work for DWTS Night 2?

DWTS presented the text-only decision as a Night 1 measure, with Ribeiro specifically saying the change was for that night. That suggests the show intended to return to its normal voting setup, although ABC had not provided a detailed public explanation of the outage immediately afterward.

Viewers should therefore avoid assuming that online voting has been permanently removed from Season 35. The website remains part of the show’s established voting system, and the September 15 disruption was treated as a technical problem rather than a rule change.

The more important question going into the second half of the premiere is whether the system can operate normally when the female contestants take the floor. After a first night in which an elimination had to proceed without any online votes, another outage would turn a technical problem into a much larger issue for the competition.