This week Maria and Derek and dancing the Paso Doble and are on Team Tango with Mark/Katherine, Roshon/Chelsie, and Jaleel/Kym. I’m looking forward to it! If you love watching Team Menough dance, you’re going to have to vote harder than ever before!!
And this is what you’ll miss when they’re gone. 
Voting tutorial for those who might be new…
It’s that time of the year again, gang – time to get organized. This is a refresher course for Derek fans, any new Derek fans, and Maria Menounos FANS! There is a page on the Official DWTS Web page that explains voting, but they leave a few things out. Now, provided they haven’t changed anything here’s how it goes:
- Vote by Phone, number of votes per phone is usually equivalent to the number of dancers. So, on the first night you get 12 votes per phone. PER PHONE, people. Your cell phone, your boyfriend’s cell phone, your home phone….you get the picture. You only have until 30 minutes until after the show ends to get your phone votes in – but you can start as soon as the show starts. Hopefully either Derek or Maria will tweet their number BEFORE the show starts. Start early because it’s impossible once the show ends.
- Vote On-line during and after the show….and till 11 eastern time the next morning. Now, you only get as many votes online as there are dancers… PER EMAIL address!! So, what do we do? We make more email addresses AND register/verify them with ABC.com. Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, whatever.
- Often, if you finish voting with all your email addresses, open a different web browser (safari, chrome, etc) and do it again.
Did I leave anything out, Derek fans?? If you have problems voting by phone – like they say you’ve already voted all your votes using that phone and you know it’s not true – KEEP TRYING because there is a glitch in the system that makes that message that says you’ve already voted play if the phone lines are overloaded. On-line issues? Close your browser and clear your cookies. If that doesn’t work, try a different browser, like Firefox or Google chrome or some such thing. Don’t give up!!
A little less than one week before the show starts – begin organizing your email addresses (and creating new ones, and registering and verifying them with DWTS.com).
MOST OF ALL – never assume someone will be safe due to a high score or even if they happen to be near the top of the leader board. That is more true right at the beginning, but it’s not fool proof.
INTERNATIONAL FANS CAN VOTE TOO!!!!
Okay, I’ve had fans from other countries tell me that international fans can vote on DWTS. Here are some handy tools to help you figure out HOW to do it.
Getting to the website is easy enough – once you find DWTS on abc.com, when voting is open there are VOTE NOW banners on the site. But here is a link where the couples should show up when voting is open – VOTE TEAM Menough!!!
Voting is open on MONDAY’S in the U.S., from 8 pm EASTERN time until 11am EASTERN time Tuesday morning. Now, if you’re not sure what time it is in the U.S., check out The World Clock, sort by city and look at U.S. New York – that is the Eastern Time Zone. That will give you the actual current time in NYC. If you’re a geek like me, then you might also like The Time Zone Converter and World Time Zone Map.
You can vote with as many different email addresses as you have. So if you have, say, 15 gmail accounts, you can vote the alloted number of times with one, sign out, sign in with a different one, and vote again. If you need a US Zip Code to register an email address on ABC.com —-> US Zip Codes (aka Post codes) Just click on the map.
US fans – have I left anything out?
And say “thanks, Elara!” 
