BEIJING • How did 81 judges cast 92 votes in the Sing! China final?

The producer of the talent show has not commented on the discrepancy, but sources close to the programme have blamed a machine error, says The Beijing News.

Last Friday, Chinese singer Jiang Dunhao won the competition, after taking 47 judge votes to Singaporean Nathan Hartono's 45, and 56.7 per cent of audience votes to Hartono's 43.3 per cent.

A source, who was at the show in Beijing's National Stadium, says there were indeed only 81 judges.

"The number of voters wasn't wrong," the source says. "One swipe on the voting machine is one vote. We didn't expect that when a swipe took a long time to be detected, the voting machine would read it again. The system didn't limit one person to one vote and 11 more votes were swiped in total."

However, Jiang's popularity with the audience was the key to his win, says the report.