Silas, the statement was made by the BBC in their response to Emma Hartley, and she has published that reply on her blog, and reads:

'The 'Voting panel' for the Folk Awards is made up of people who are making judgments and decisions about folk music as part of their job, but are not performers themselves'

I would imagine the reality is that as Howard has already rightly pointed out, that many of the judges are probably performers to some degree, and like Howard, I personally don't have a problem with that, but if you read the earlier post from banjiman, you will see that at least one of the judges is a well established and respected top flight performer, and also manages one of the nominees. the inference of the BBC statement is that the judges are likely to be agents, promoters, managers etc, which does of course beg the question of a vested interest in the nominees.

'honest mistake'? I don't know, but would have my doubts. It is precisely because there are only snippets of unclear information that we get the conspiracy theories you refer to in your earlier post and I would echo the earlier call that transparency is what's needed.

John