How the voting works

Towards the end of each month entries will close, and there will be a 5-6 day voting period when voting becomes active. To vote you have to have a legimate, verifiable, human answerable email address. Bot votes will be deleted and if we find out who you are, we’ll call you out for cheating.

This public vote will count a hefty 50% in deciding each month’s winner, as well as for deciding the final Ride of the Season.

The other 50% will be determined by a panel of five Oakley One Wave Wonder judges. Each judge’s vote will count 10%. So, for example, say Blikkies Joubert (no relation to Shaun) gets 40% of the public vote for his ten second tube into a rodeo flip and cracks the nod from two of the judges as well, he claims 60% of the vote and is an undisputed winner.

IMPORTANT NOTE: voting will only be active in those 5-6 days during the voting period when entries are closed. The event status will indicate that voting is on, and a vote icon will then appear next to all the entries.

HOW IT WORKS:
1. When voting opens, the layout of the page changes and each wave will have a voting field (for your email address) and a vote button next to it.

2. Vote for your favourite clip/s by filling in your email address and clicking on the vote icon next to it. Like all good democracies we work on the system of one person, one vote – with a twist. In other words, you can give the thumbs up and vote for multiple entries, but you can’t vote for the same entry twice.

3. You’ve got five days to cast your vote/s, with voting closing on the last day of the month at 5pm. The winner will then be announced within two days.

4. No new entries will be uploaded during the voting period, which means any ride documented over this period will only be admissible for the following month’s upload.

Entrants are encouraged to use Facebook and social networking to alert people to their rides and rally legitimate support. But by making it an even 50-50 split, the judging panel and public vote compliment each other perfectly to get a rounded perspective and prevent any blatant bias from deciding the winner i.e. it will always be the most core, credible ride that wins.

So, besides yourself, who’s judging this thing?

1. Warwick ‘Wok’ Wright (Pro Surfer, Former ISA World Champ, blogger and ASP webcast commentator)
2. Calvin Bradley (Zigzag Digital Editor)
3. Jonathan Paarman (SA surfing legend, former Red Bull Big Wave Africa Contest Director)
4. Craig Jarvis (former Zag editor and WP surfer. Now best known for being “that bloody natural footer” at Seal Point)
5. Davey Weare (former WCT surfer, multiple national champ and all round good guy)

Since there is a reasonable chance that both Davey and Wok could enter the comp, a sixth judge will be on standby for those months where they cannot cast a vote. That judge is Alan van Gysen (the lensman behind more than 50 international surf magazine covers to date)