American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance executive producer, Nigel Lythgoe, was in New York City yesterday to meet with advertisers. While there, he sat down with Zap2It.com to answer some of their questions.

While the article didn’t specifically mention the questions that were posed to Nigel, one of them must have been about the voting process on American Idol.

For next season, Lythgoe’s mulling over the voting process. “I am going to be interested in listening to one device, one vote, each week,” he says. “Voting will be discussed. It is unique to ‘Idol,’ the way we have it now.”

If it did change, “we would never be able to boast again 72 million votes in a night.”

American Idol‘s unlimited voting has been a source of frustration for viewers for a few seasons now, especially those viewers who believe that no female will ever be crowned the winner again under the current format. That frustration turned into downright anger when Pia Toscano was eliminated in ninth place last season, a topic that still dominates many an AI discussion.

But it’s hard to take Nigel seriously when he says things like, “I am going to be interested in listening to one device, one vote, each week.”

Nigel, in the future, please make sure you are awake when you are giving these interviews. Cause you have some weird dreams, dude.

The only way “one device, one vote” could ever be implemented is if you instituted a voting registration system. Viewers who wanted to vote would have to go online to register, providing enough information to ensure that they couldn’t possibly register additional accounts. Not only would a large majority of viewers not be willing to register to vote, few viewers would be willing to provide the information needed to ensure a single registration.

But some sort of move away from purely unlimited voting may be needed. As Nigel hinted in his answer, the current system used on American Idol is unique to the show. All the other shows either limit the number of votes, allow the judges to have a say in who goes home, or both.

Limiting the number of votes per voting method would solve the perceived issue of tween and teen girls influencing the results, a group many believe stay up late to vote the entire 2 – 4 hours after the show. But it would also limit the number of texts that are sent, and it’s speculated that those text voters are a large source of revenue for AT&T and American Idol.

Vote limits doesn’t seem to affect America’s Got Talent, which is getting higher ratings in the all important 18-49 demographics, as well as total viewers, this season over last season most weeks. While the judges can end an act’s performance early, they have no additional power in deciding who stays or who goes.

The website VoteFair.org has long championed a voting method that allows voters to rank the contestants in 1-2-3 order. They claim the results of such a voting method more accurately show which contestant is the most/least popular. According to the site, the contestant with the most votes in the current method may not truly be the most popular contestant. Likewise, the contestant with the least votes in the current method may not truly be the least popular contestant. I don’t feel VoteFair.org does a good job explaining why their system would produce more fair results, so I find it hard to accept their premise. In addition, this type of voting would likely only work with voters only being allowed to vote once, which, as stated above, may affect the 18 – 49 rating of the show.

Another method that has been mentioned by Idol Radio Show callers in the past is to have viewers vote for who they want to see sent home, not for who they want to keep on the show. Many people use the example of Season 6′s Sanjaya Malakar and Season 9′s Tim Urban as examples of being able to get highly disliked contestants out quicker. What most people seem to forget, however, is that such a format would likely result in a significant reduction in viewers, which in turn would lead to a significant reduction in the number of voters. Voting for your favorites encourages passion among the contestants’ block of fans. Voting for who you want to send home would only encourage passion towards one or two contestants, and once those contestants were ousted, there wouldn’t be anyone left to be passionate about.

Dancing with the Stars has the most complicated formula of the three shows where the judges’ have an influence into who goes home. The judges’ score for each individual contestant is divided by the judges’ score for all contestants combined to determine the percentage score for each contestant. So if Contestant A gets a score of 30 from the judges, with the sum of scores for all the contestants that night totaling 150, then Contestant A’s percentage of the judges’ score comes to 20%. This percentage is then added to the percentage of votes the contestant got from America. So if Contestant A received 1 million votes in a night where America cast a total of 10 million votes, then Contestant A’s percentage of America’s votes comes to 10%. This would give Contestant A a total of 30%.

Because the judges’ scores are based on nothing more than their assessment of the contestant’s routines that night, this method will normally prevent a fan favorite who is a rubbish dancer from getting too far in the competition. Eventually the low scores given to that contestant by the judges will overcome the high scores given to them by America.

The Voice also allows the coaches to score the contestants in some of the live voting rounds. But as we saw last season, the coaches are voting based on their feelings and not necessarily on how the contestants performed that night. Three of the coaches last season wussed out and gave identical or nearly identical scores. Only Adam Levine gave disparate scores, but even then he did it not based on how good or bad the contestants did, but simply because he felt that getting to the finals was Javier’s last chance at a recording contract.

Both The X Factor and So You Think You Can Dance leave the going home decision to the judges. On XF, the judges are invested in the acts they chose to be in the Top 12. Because of that, a judge will pick to save their act 99% of the time, no matter how bad the act was that week. This automatically gives each act one vote to stay (unless two of a judges’ acts are in the Bottom 2 together). On the British version of the show, the last judge to vote often deliberately ties up the score so as not to be the judge that sends an act home. The voting from the night before is then used to determine which act is going home.

For the most part, the judges on So You Think You Can Dance base the decision on who should go home on actual talent and merit, though Megan Mullally in week 1 forced the decision to be postponed a week when she couldn’t help Nigel and Mary Murphy decide who should go home (reason #1 for why the third judge shouldn’t be a celebrity judge).

But there is a problem with giving the American Idol judges the ability to score the contestants: They love everyone! It doesn’t matter if a contestant forgets every single word, flips off the audience, and pees all over the stage. The judges will all proclaim how much they love that contestant, praise him/her for being different, and issue a score of 100.

And allowing the judges to be the sole decider of which Bottom 3 contestant goes home? Haven’t the judges proved they can’t be trusted with that power with the Season 8 save of Matt Giraud and Season 10 save of Casey Anthony? Besides, with so many viewers convinced that the judges simply say whatever the producer’s tell them to say, conspiracy theorists will have a field day with every elimination.

Until the judges prove that they can be trusted with their decisions, there is no way viewers are going to accept their involvement in deciding who goes home. Doesn’t matter if it’s score-based or the final decision. We’ve had 10 seasons of crying foul at how it the producers and judges try to influence us to vote. Giving them any control will simply cause us to tune out.

So for now, I say leave unlimited voting alone. While we may cry foul at how the show tries to influence our votes and lament how a female will never win the show again, the voting system is our voting system. We know it’s unfair and we love to gripe about it. Don’t take that away from us.

What do you think? Should American Idol leave the voting system alone? Or should they make some changes? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

And don’t forget to join me tonight at 11 PM ET / 10 PM CT for the Idol Radio Show.