Academy members receive their Oscar ballots this week, and will begin returning them to PricewaterhouseCoopers almost immediately.
As for what happens next, even most voters have little idea.
The Academy’s executive director, Bruce Davis, has spoken to groups about the process, sent letters to Academy branches that have asked for explanations, and tried to make sure that members understand why the system will let them vote for their favorites without second-guessing or playing games.
But he’s not convinced that the message ever really sinks in. “I don’t think a very high percentage of members could describe exactly how it works,” he once told me. “When I hear them talking about it, I can tell they don’t understand.”
So how does it work?
Take a deep breath ...
To begin with, it doesn’t involve computers. This is a very low-tech process, one that involves stacking ballots on a table -- and not leaving a paper trail. Called the “preferential system,” it's an intricate and little-used process also known as instant runoff voting.
It can be used to come up with a slate of candidates. It also can be used to avoid runoff elections by looking at a voter’s second and third choices -- but it only does that as needed.
And, theoretically, it avoids the problems that can arise in a typical weighted system, in which your first choice gets 10 points, your second choice nine, etc.
Ideally, the system means voters won’t have to play games with their ballots; they can vote for the films they truly believe are best, and the system will allocate their vote where it will do the most good. Your vote will go to your last-place choice only if your other choices don’t need it.
Before we get into the process, a couple of key points:
First, you’re listing five or 10 films on your ballot, but you’re only actually voting for one. Your ballot gives you a single vote, which goes to a single film. (Ballot photo: Greg Harbaugh/AMPAS).
Second, if a movie's not ranked number one on somebody’s ballot, it's out. This serves to narrow the field considerably.
One result of this that the number of films contending for the 10 Best Picture nominations will actually be no larger than the number that would have been contending for five.
Example: Movie City News is now compiling all the critics’ top 10 lists for the year. As of this weekend, they had 54 lists, which mentioned a total of 104 different films.
But only 21 of those films were ranked number one on the ballots – so if those lists were tabulated using the preferential system, those 21 films would be in the running and the other 83 would be immediately eliminated.
Let's begin ...
Conjuring up the magic number ...
If you’re a PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant on the Oscar team, you’ll start by taking all the ballots in a category, counting them and determining how many votes it’ll take to guarantee a spot in the top 10, or the top five.
