How Does ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Voting Work? Exactly How Scores Are Tallied

Great news for everyone sad about deleting the Love Island USA app off their phone. It’s time to participate in yet another reality TV election from the comfort of your own home.Dancing With the Stars season 35 is incoming on September 15, and you (YES YOU) will get to vote for your favorite celebrities and pro-partners. So, if you’ve been harboring a long-time obsession with Giada De Laurentiis, now is a great time to make your voice heard.But...how exactly does voting work, considering judges also have a say in who goes home? It’s a whole thing!First Up: Here’s How to Vote on DWTSOnce the season starts, you can either go to the website dwtsvote.abc.com and cast your vote, or you can fire off a simple text. Typically, this involves texting your favorite celeb’s name to the number 21523. You can cast your vote up to 10 times!How Do the Judges’ Scores Work?Each judge gives a numeric score from 1–10, which is factored into the celebrity’s overall score along with the audience vote.Basically, it’s 50/50. Meaning, a celebrity’s overall result is 50 percent audience votes and 50 percent judges’ scores. So, let’s say the judges handed out 10s across the board. Technically, the celeb could still go home if fans weren’t feeling their performance.Last year, executive producer Conrad Green told The Hollywood Reporter, “Say there’s five couples and you’re in first place on that [judges] leaderboard, you get five judges ranking points. If you’re in second place, you get four, if you’re in third place, you get three, two, one. We do the same with the amount of public votes. You add those two ranking points together, and the couple with the lowest combined total of those ranking points goes home.”Here’s a similar explanation from pro Lindsay Arnold:What If There’s a Tie?In that case, Green says they look to the audience, and “The couple with the fewest public votes goes home.”Why Doesn’t DWTS Release Viewer Voting Numbers?According to Green, they don’t want to influence the way fans vote. “In all kinds of ways, like any election or vote, you don’t want to be prejudicing the election or vote,” he explained.Got it! Reminder: DWTS airs September 15, 2026 at 8 pm ET.