I know I should just give up, but I can't.
A year and a half after the Academy went to a different system for counting Best Picture ballots, nominees and voters and campaigners still don't understand how it works. And it's driving me crazy.
The latest example: I went to a party over the weekend, and heard a producer who'd gotten a Best Picture nomination telling people, "It's a weighted ballot. You need to vote for [my movie] number one, and [our biggest competitor] number 10."
He's wrong.
It's not a weighted ballot.
And his strategy would not do a damn thing to help his movie.
This is the same kind of dumb campaigning that lost "Hurt Locker" producer Nicolas Chartier his tickets to last year's Oscar show. Now, Chartier pushed his strategy (which was to ask people to rank his movie first, and "Avatar" last) in emails, which is worse than doing so verbally because it's a far more blatant campaign violation.
But no matter whether it's done via email or whispers at parties, the bottom line remains the same: it won't work.
I've written about it here, and here, and here, and some other places as well. But I'll explain it again.
The Oscar Best Picture Ballot, which is counted by PricewaterhouseCoopers using the preferential process, lists the 10 nominees and asks voters to rank them one through 10.
The accountants sort the ballots into stacks based on the film ranked first on each ballot. If one film doesn't have more than 50% of the vote, the nominee with the fewest number-one votes is eliminated, and its votes go to the film ranked second on each of its ballots.
This process continues, with the weakest remaining competitor eliminated and its ballots redistributed, until one film has more than 50 percent. The result will be the one film with the truest consensus support.
It is NOT a weighted ballot. It does NOT allocate 10 points to your number one choice, nine points to number two, etc. You CANNOT hurt your top choice by ranking its biggest competitor second.
And anybody who tells you otherwise doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.
The main thing to keep in mind when you fill out a Best Picture ballot is that you are simply casting one vote, for one movie. That vote goes to the movie ranked first on your ballot, and it stays there until that movie has either won, or been eliminated from contention.
If your favorite is eliminated, then and only then will the vote shift to your second choice. If this happens, you can rest assured that you had absolutely nothing to do with your top choice being knocked out, and there's not a thing you could have done to prevent it (short of persuading more people to vote for your movie).
