[alanross]

Just held our annual contest last night and we used the suggestion from earlier in this forum about having the contestants judge each other. We held five weeks of qualifying and chose three finalists each week. Last night, we held the finals and all fifteen of the finalists were the judges and at the end of the night, not one person complained that the results were "fixed". Also, I cleared the seats around the stage and made all the contestants sit there to do the judging. There was therefore more pressure on them to pay attention and really think about their scoring. The results were very positive. It truly is the best way to handle the judging.