The Voice Went Live For The First Time In Season 24, But I'm Bummed About The Voting Restrictions

Spoiler alert! This story discusses The Voice’s Season 24 Top 12 performance episode, which aired December 4.

The Voice Season 24 is officially out of the coaches’ control and into the hands of America. The Top 12 performed on Monday’s episode as the show went live for the first time this season, and there was a lot at stake with three people set to be eliminated on Tuesday’s episode. This crop of contestants have been impressive so far, and they definitely came to play on this night. In fact, there were multiple artists I could see being crowned The Voice champion, and that’s why I’m so bummed about the voting rules.

Carson Daly announced at the top of the show that viewers can vote once per email address, per voting method, but how are we even supposed to begin to choose our ONE favorite act (or two, if you vote on both the app and the website) out of the dozen? Do I throw support behind Niall Horan’s Nini Iris for nailing The Cure’s “Lovesong” or Mac Royals of Team Legend for making Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can't Make You Love Me” his own?

This is a season, may I remind you, that included so many prospective winners that Carson Daly allowed The Voice coaches to each bring back an eliminated artist for the Playoffs because of the immense talent. Azán sure proved why Four-Chair Turn king John Legend chose to “Super Save” her with her live performance of Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” but Ruby Leigh literally sang Reba McEntire’s hit “You Lie” on live TV in front of Reba McEntire. It feels straight-up insulting to the singers to not be able to give credit where it's due.

I thought Gwen Stefani might be in trouble at the live shows, but now I feel like the pressure is actually on the fans. In past seasons — and on other shows like Dancing with the Stars — voters have been able to vote for as many contestants as they want up to 10 times. This allows fans a lot of options, because they can throw full support behind a specific artist or team but then maybe still give a couple of votes here and there as desired. I don’t know if that method is the best way, but certainly we need more options than just one or two votes.

I don’t appear to be alone in my thinking, either, because viewers began complaining immediately on social media about not knowing where their singular vote would go. Comments on X included:

• Damn I can’t believe I can only vote for ONE singer this year! I don’t like it…. – Cajuarobin

• WHY DO WE ONLY GET TO VOTE FOR ONE ARTIST? 🤨🤷🏻‍♂️🙄🎶🎤 – ODedOnRealityTV

• How in the world am I expected to only vote for 1 person? That's literally impossible this season. – kkallicat

• How are we supposed to be able to pick only one to vote for??! When the talent is insanely good, this is going to be nearly impossible 🤯 – charlyybrownn

• Whoever decided you can only vote for one person is going straight to jail – harryzsunflower

• The Voice is only letting us vote for ONE person!!! That's crazy. Top three at least!!! NBC that is WRONG!!! – thibtalk

Another fan had an interesting suggestion on how to change things up, posting:

The Voice has definitely not ever had viewers vote for who should be eliminated, and it would feel pretty mean-spirited to target one specific artist in that way, rather than showing support for the ones you like. But I have to admit it would make the “one vote” conundrum easier.

The show often changes up its rules from season to season, so hopefully something can be done to give viewers slightly more options when it comes to voting in Season 25, but for now we’ll just have to tune in to find out how people chose to spend their one vote. Voting is open until 7 a.m. ET Tuesday, December 5, and the results will be announced that night, at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. Episodes are also available to stream the next day with a Peacock subscription.