Leslie, until the show reached the finals you got as many votes each week as there were contestants. So, on the first week you were allowed 12 votes per phone line, per E-mail account and per text message cell phone line. I could never get my votes on my E-mail account to work the first two weeks this season, then I gave up trying to vote that way. But my husband was voting on his laptop with no problem. I would miss too much of the show running back and forth to the study to vote on the computer so I just used our portable phone with the redial feature. On week two you got 11 votes and so on through the weeks with fewer votes each week as there were fewer contestants. I think they allow voting to start early because that is the only way they can handle the volume of calls. Last night I started voting at 8:15 and it took all the way until 9:25 to reach my limit of 5 calls. I do agree that this policy hurts the contestants who dance last if you are waiting to see how they do on any given week. If your favorite dances near the end it becomes very difficult to get your votes in before voting closes in your time zone. That happened to me two different weeks. A laptop or text message seems to be the best way to go.