Oscar Votes 123

Nominations Out Today!

2012-01-24T13:38:00.000-08:00

Nominations for the Oscars were released this morning. Check out the full list of nominees, and be sure to vote for your favorites for Best Picture on our site. We use Ranked Choice Voting just like the Academy.

AMPAS Modifies Best Picture Nomination Method, Maintains Proportional Voting Principles

2011-06-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a long history of using innovative voting methods to nominate and select the winners of its annual Academy Awards. This week it announced changes in the way nominations for the sought-after Best Picture award will be determined and confirmed that it will keep ranked choice voting (RCV, or "instant runoff voting) for the final vote for Best Picture..

The Academy announced Tuesday that, beginning next year, movies will be nominated for Best Picture using a modified form of the choice voting form of proportional voting used for nominations in nearly all other categories. The new rules will always result in at least five nominated movies and as many as ten, but not a fixed number. The Academy has long used choice voting to select nominees and adopted instant runoff voting to select the Best Picture winner in 2009.

FairVote confirmed with Academy leader how the new rules will work. Under the new Best Picture nomination system, Academy voters will submit ballots ranking their top 5 movies in order of preference.The job for those voters (likely to be about 5,000 out of a pool of 6,000) is easy: just indicate their preferred movies in order of preference.

Best Picture nominees will be chosen according to the following process -- a more complicated one than traditional choice voting, but still making it likely that the final set of nominees will reflect a full diversity of perspectives among Academy voters.

First choice votes are tallied as one vote each.
The rules for a choice voting election for ten winners then are applied -- meaning that the "victory threshold" is just over 9.1% of the total votes cast. Any picture securing at least 9.1% support at any point in the count is nominated.(Note that this threshold derives from the fact that it is the fewest number of votes that only ten winners can have. When applied to other categories like Best Actor and Best Actress, the threshold is just over one-sixth of the vote, as that is the fewer number of votes that only five winners can have.)
If any motion picture nominee's total in first choices surpasses 11% of first choice (which is a fifth more than the 9.1% threshold -- typically in choice voting this surplus happens for any ballots beyond the victory threshold, but the Academy adds this extra "cushion"), then that nominee's "surplus" ballots above the winning threshold are distributed to next choices, with every ballot added to the totals of the next choice listed on it at an equally reduced value (with the total of those transferred values equal to the surplus beyond the victory threshold). If the second choice on the ballot has already passed the victory threshold and been nominated, then the ballot is added to the totals of the third choice, and so forth.
This process is repeated for each nominee that has more than victory threshold.
At this point, all pictures with less than 1% support are simultaneously eliminated. Any ballots ranking them first (or redistributed from nominated movies) are added to the totals of the next choice on the ballot that has not been nominated.
Vote totals are examined. Any picture with at least 5% support is a nominee. All other pictures will be eliminated. The number of nominees could be as few as five (in the event that fewer than five movies secure at least 5%, the top vote-getters among movies below 5% will be nominated) or as many as ten (in the unlikely event that more than ten pictures surpass 5%, the ones with the fewest votes above 5% will be eliminated.)

As veteran entertainment journalist Steve Pond details in his highly recommended discussion of the potential impact of the new rules at The Wrap, this process will result in fewer votes actually counting for nominated movies in the final round, but will also increase the value of a movie having enthusiastic support. Very few motion pictures will be nominated that don't have close to 5% of first choices, unlike under the old rules. At the same time, it's also possible that a Best Picture nomination will go to a more iconoclastic movie that has enough strong adherents to secure 5% first choice support, but is not widely enough known or appreciated to have been able to secure 9.1% of the vote under the old rules.

The rule changes will only affect nominations for Best Picture. As in previous years, choice voting will be used to select nominees in nearly all other categories, and ranked choice voting will be used to select the ultimate winner of the Best Picture award. In another notable development, the Academy also indicated that it will soon be shifting to an electronic voting system in lieu of paper ballots, possibly as early as next year.

For FairVote's coverage of last year's Academy Awards nomination and selection process, including an authentic instant runoff voting poll that accurately predicted the Best Picture winner, see earlier posts on this blog. For more information on the election systems used by the Academy, visit:

AMPAS Praises IRV

2011-05-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

As regular readers of this blog will know, voters in the United Kingdom will soon cast ballots in a May 5 referendum to decide whether IRV (known locally as the Alternative Vote) will be used for future elections in that country. As the decision date nears, one very familiar organization using IRV has endorsed the system -- the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Independent reports that AMPAS is happy with the performance of IRV in Best Picture elections and plans to continue using the system. Bruce Davis, Executive Director of AMPAS, voiced the organization’s satisfaction, citing IRV’s support of fair outcomes and boost to voter turnout. Said Davis:

For our most important category we wanted to ensure that more than half the electorate endorsed the choice. We're very happy with the way it's working and we don't plan to change it.

There was a certain trepidation from our members when we first announced it that it might prove more cumbersome. But we explained the system and PricewaterhouseCoopers told us that more members actually voted than before.

Davis went on to point out that skeptics' concerns about the system were overblown:

There were lots of conspiracy theory blogs about how people could rig the voting but they proved fatuous. You want to find the picture that has the broadest support rather than the most passionate support by a minority.

Polls have been close throughout the campaign season, and only time will tell which side of the issue will emerge victorious on Thursday. You can read more on the campaign at the FairVote Blog. But whatever the outcome of the UK referendum, the continued satisfaction of AMPAS with IRV indicates the system’s power to produce fair, widely-supported outcomes -- even in elections as perennially contentious as the Oscars.

How preferential voting didn't help The King's Speech win

2011-02-28T14:24:00.000-08:00

Oscar season 2011 is over. At the Academy Awards ceremony last night, The King’s Speech took home the coveted Best Picture award, besting such prominent contenders as The Social Network and Inception. Just like last year, the winner of the award was chosen using the Academy’s “preferential voting” system, otherwise known as instant runoff voting. And once again, the results refute the notion that the preferential voting system tilts the playing field in favor of any certain kind of film.

In the wake of the ceremony, there has been speculation in some quarters that The King’s Speech might have been helped along to victory by the preferential balloting method. But a quick look at results from this year and last shows that this argument stands on shaky factual ground. Just as The Hurt Locker did last year, The King’s Speech won both the Best Picture award and the prize for Best Director. Unlike the Best Picture category, which was expanded to a ten-candidate preferential ballot contest last year, the Best Director category is decided by a more traditional formula: Five nominees are selected, and the winner is chosen by a simple plurality vote. If there were, as skeptics claim, a built-in advantage for certain candidates in the IRV system, then we would expect the Best Director category to produce results different from the Best Picture outcome. But in each of the first two years of preferential balloting, the results have been the same, with the Best Picture winner also taking home the Oscar for Best Director. This would suggest that, far from radically upsetting the traditional system, the introduction of IRV in the Best Picture Category has simply provided a means to protect fair outcomes while expanding the field to ten candidates.

Rob Richie, Executive Director of FairVote, said:

Many of those who either criticize or praise these best picture outcomes based on use of IRV are missing a key point. It’s upholding fair outcomes, not allowing winners that couldn’t win with the old plurality voting system. IRV and plurality will usually pick the same winner -- indeed, they always would if there were only two choices. When the two systems don’t pick the same candidate, IRV is fairer, as it would suggest that plurality voting would have resulted in a winner who needed a split vote to win. Much of the conjecture of IRV’s impact has been based on a lack of understanding that IRV is a one-person, one-vote system designed to elect the movie that has a lot of first choices, but also beats the other top movies when matched against them one-on-one. A movie is not going to win by being everyone’s second choice, and a movie won't win based on the order of elimination of the weakest movies. It's called an instant runoff for good reason: IRV will elect the movie that more voters prefer to its top competitor.

This year’s Best Picture result was accurately predicted by the OscarVotes123 poll, in which voters were given the chance to rank all ten candidates in order of preference – just as the Academy members did on their ballots. The poll provides a round-by-round breakdown that shows which voters had their ballots counted for which candidates, providing an illustration of an instant runoff in action. OscarVotes123 plans to conduct another poll next year. In the mean time, interested readers can create their own polls at www.DemoChoice.org, a free tool for conducting IRV elections.

When the King and the Queen support IRV

2011-02-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

Oscar night is barely a week away, and Academy of Motion Picture voters have had to submit their ballots. Now it’s down to the counting. For Best Picture, that count will be with instant runoff voting, the ranked choice voting method used for a growing number of elections around the world.

What is striking is that the favorite for the Oscar Best Picture’s Award, “The King’s Speech” has a unique connection to IRV.

On May 5, the nation where the movie takes place—the United Kingdom-- will hold its second national referendum in history. The subject matter will be on instant runoff voting – called “the Alternative Vote” in the UK -- for future elections to the House of Commons Furthermore, the movie’s leading star – Colin Firth (George VI) and Helena Bonham Carter (Queen Elizabeth) – have joined the “yes” campaign.

Colin Firth, the overwhelming favorite for Best Actor declared to The Guardian: "The referendum is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change our clapped-out politics for good. I'll be voting yes."

Bonham Carter, nominated in the Best Actress category, joined him an endorsement. Ironically, she is a close friend of Samantha Cameron, wife of Prime Minister David Cameron, who has announced his opposition to the referendum. (Leaders of the Liberal Democratic and Labor Parties are both backing a Yes vote, however.)

There’s one more connection to flag. The other main actor of the movie, Geoffrey Rush (who plays King George’s speech therapist), is from Australia, where members of the House of Representatives have been elected by Instant Runoff Voting for nearly a century.

Are all these signs a product of coincidence or a real touch of destiny for “The King’s Speech”? Will the voting method that Bonham Carter and Firth support for their country elect their movie as the Best Picture of the year? The answer will be given on the 27th -- and an even bigger question about the future of fair elections and voter choice-friendly electoral rules to be answered in the United Kingdom on May 5th.

New York Times Plurality Ballot

2011-02-16T20:52:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has a spiffy site for their poll / voting on the Best Picture Academy Award. All ten nominees are on the ballot but there's something a little wrong - they're using a plurality ballot! Their ballot will show who has the most votes, and could reveal a majority winner - but as of this posting NYT's poll leader The King's Speech is at a 44 percent plurality.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses a preferential ballot like the one offered above. Instead of a single choice, a voter ranks their favorite flicks. On our ballot, as of this posting, The King's Speech is at 33 percent of first choices. If you view the results and click on "FINAL ROUND" the film goes on to be the majority winner. What has happened is the app performed a series of runoff elections until one flick, The King's Speech crossed 50 percent + 1 of the votes.

I like the New York Times and read it often. But please, the "paper of record" should at least have a preferential ballot for their mock election! If you want a more realistic Oscar election - use our app above.

For Academy Voters: Four Rules for Voting for Best Picture

2011-01-31T01:58:00.000-08:00

With ballots soon to be returned to determine the winners of the Oscars at the Academy Awards, members of the Academy may have questions about the instant runoff voting system used to select the winner of the Best Picture award. Also known as "preferential voting" in Australia, "the alternative vote" in the United Kingdom and "ranked choice voting" in some American cities, instant runoff voting has been used in the Best Picture category since 2009.

Not everything Oscar analysts are saying about the system is accurate, however. Here are four key points for Academy voters to keep in mind when filling out a ranked choice ballot for Best Picture.

1. To vote, you simply rank the nominated movies in order of preference, indicating your first choice, second choice and so on. Voting is literally as easy as “1, 2, 3.’ Oscar ballots are counted according to a straightforward counting procedure that allows voters’ backup choices to be taken into account if their first choice has been defeated. To read about the details of the process, see our earlier post.

2. Voters should rank as their first choice the movie they most want to win and their second choice as their sincere next favorite. A voter should vote sincerely, starting with your first choice, onto your second choice and so on until you are indifferent about the remaining choices. Any effort to help your favorite movie by changing your order of preference is foolhardy and nearly certain to backfire.

3. Rank as many movies as you can without concern about hurting your first choice. A voter’s ballot is only counted for one movie at a time and your second choice will never count against the chances of your first choice. That’s because your vote will only count for your second-choice film if your first-choice film is eliminated from contention. Suppose you really want to see your top choice to win, but its top competitor is your sincere second choice. Ranking that competing movie as your actual second choice will not have any effect on the chances of your first choice winning – rather, it’s only potential impact is to help that second choice defeat the remaining movies.

4. Don't rank the same movie more than once. Ranking a movie multiple times (e.g. as 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice) will not help that candidate’s chances of winning. Because your backup choices only come into play once your first choice has been eliminated, repeated rankings of a movie do nothing to help that movie.

Note: As discussed in this earlier post, there are two different forms of “preferential voting” used by the Academy. The other variation used to select nominations is called choice voting. It is a form of proportional representation designed to nominate potential Oscar winners who reflect the strong preferences of as many Academy voters as possible.

With choice voting for Oscar nominations, passion wins

2011-01-27T20:22:00.000-08:00

In the days since the nominations of the 83rd Oscars’ ceremony awards were announced, the entertainment press has written quite a bit about the surprises, along with the usual talk of scandalous snubs. What should be highlighted more, we believe, is the important role of the system used to choose these nominees -- who, no matter matter happens in the final vote, are already winners.

Much attention focuses on the battle for Best Picture, seen by many to be between The King’s Speech and The Social Network, two movies with very different profiles: one telling he story of a king trying to improve his speaking skills in a World War II background while the other telling the story of the more current topic of the early days of Facebook.

But while those movies are the frontrunners, nearly every other nominated film has its advocates. As Jen Chaney for the Washington Post writes:

“Let's just stop arguing, America, and accept the fact that all the movies competing for Oscar's top token of glory are pretty darn good.”

What Chaney doesn’t mention, however, is that this outcome speaks to what it means to use the choice voting form of proportional representation for in the voting for nominations, where winning requires having some people really wanting you as a first choice. Earning a nomination is a “win” in itself, and what we have seen this week is the “fair representation” day of victories: nominees in all categories are winners with at least significant numbers of Academy voters.

Entertainment Week this week also has a revealing and entertaining (if poorly named) article about the Oscar voting nomination rules. The magazine held an election for about 2,000 of its readers who voted for Best Picture. Interestingly, using the same counting rules used by the Academy, eight of its ten winners were the same as nominated by the Academy, which reinforces the basic fairness of the voting method. Writer John’s Young final conclusion is exactly right: “A film or performance doesn’t capture a nomination simply by being liked by everyone — it needs to be loved.”

Like the rest of us, of course, not all Academy voters “love” the same kind of performance or the same kind of movie. Some are more traditional, some more interested in change. Some like a certain acting style, others a different one. The idea for nominations is that at least some people are likely to need to think it was a genuine top performance.. If we take for example the Best Picture category, we can praise the fact that a low budget, less well-known movie like Winter’s Bone can earn nominations along with blockbusters like Inception and Toy Story 3.

Not everyone can win, of course. In the documentary category, for example, the influential documentary Waiting for Superman was not nominated, much to the distress of some of the film’s fans. But as AJ Schnack argues in a recent blogpost on “Unraveling the Myths Behind Superman's Oscar Snub" this week it had real competition:

“A surprise is not a snub. Yes, it was a surprise that Waiting for Superman wasn't on Oscar's final list of 5, but we figured a surprise was coming (we just picked the wrong one) and just because it was surprising doesn't make it a snub. As I wrote on Monday, voters were looking for a passion pick to "stand as the emblem of the exceptionally great year that we just had."

For a movie or an artist, earning a nomination in such a prestigious ceremony is really winning one. Thus, to win a nomination, Academy voters – voting in the category they know best, as all nomination voting is restricted to particular categories of Academy voters except for Best Picture -- must be passionate by their work and voters by their performances. That’s a good thing for Oscar nominations – and is good for representation in legislatures.

IRV and the Oscars: How Best Picture is Chosen

2011-01-27T07:30:00.000-08:00

Now that nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards have been announced and the final stretch has begun in earnest, pundits and prognosticators have begun dialing in their predictions for the most prominent awards. Perhaps none of these categories attracts more speculation than the coveted Best Picture award. With ten candidates vying for the top spot, the race promises to be wide-open and thrilling.

Given the number of high-quality films this year, odds are that plenty of critics will see their sure-fire pick for Best Picture end up on the wrong side of a post-announcement reaction shot on the night of the ceremony. But fortunately, to help ensure that the winner truly reflects the preferences of Academy voters , the Best Picture award is selected by instant runoff voting.

Instant runoff voting comes with a handful of names: preferential voting in Australia, ranked choice voting in some American cities using it and the alternative vote in the United Kingdom. The adoption of IRV earned a lot of attention last year, including coverage in a USA Today editorial and Vanity Fair. This year it again is drawing coverage. Famed numbers guru Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight.com and The New York Times, posted fascinating article on Tuesday explaining the instant runoff process and showing what outcome of the race for the night’s biggest award would be if the nation’s critics were the voters. It’s highly recommended reading for those interested in a quantitatively grounded perspective on how the contest might play out.

For those who are new to instant runoff voting, here is how the system works – with a series of “instant runoffs” that simulate what would happen if everyone were asked to vote again after the last-place finisher were eliminated before each round of voting:

1. Voters rank candidates in order of preference on their ballot.

2. First choices are counted. If any candidate is ranked 1st on a majority of ballots, then that candidate is declared the winner and the election is over. If not, then the counting process goes on.

3. The candidate ranked 1st on the fewest number of ballots is eliminated. Each of these ballots is counted instead for the candidate ranked 2nd on that ballot.

4. The redistributed ballots are added to the totals of the remaining candidates. If any candidate has over 50% of the ballots in play (the original 1st choices and the redistributed 2nd choices), then that candidate is declared the winner. If not, then the counting process continues.

5. The remaining candidate ranked 1st on the smallest number of ballots is again eliminated. Each of these ballots is counted instead for the candidate ranked 2nd on that ballot. If the candidate ranked 2nd has been eliminated, then the ballot is counted for the candidate ranked 3rd, and so forth.

6. This process of eliminating candidates and redistributing ballots continues until one candidate secures over 50% of the ballots in play.

Thanks to the system, the winner that emerges will accurately represent the preferences of academy voters.

There’s of course no “perfect” voting system, but IRV is a terrific system for handling more than two choices – both because no Oscar voter is going to be able to “trick” the system with insincere voting and because it upholds majority rule. To win an IRV election, a candidate must have support that is both broad and deep: the film must attract strong first-choice support from its enthusiasts while continuing to pick up ballots from supporters of other films who consider it a worthy 2nd or 3rd choice. In the end, the film that is the most strongly and widely by Academy voters liked will be crowned Best Picture.

Because IRV is new to many people, however, some can misunderstand its impact. Some Oscar observers are suggesting that only agreeable,broadly-liked pictures can now win because they don’t understand how important it is to have a strong first choice vote as well as appeal as a second choice. Others think that voters should try to outsmart the system by only voting for one film or perhaps changing the order of their choices, not realizing that a lower-ranked choice never counts against your top-ranked choice and that it would be foolhardy not to rank movies in your true order of choice.

In last year’s Oscars, for example, The Hurt Locker was an upset winner over Avatar, and some observers suggested that IRV must have been the reason. But the fact is that The Hurt Locker’s director Kathryn Bigelow also won the Oscar for Best Director in a plurality vote, clearly not needing IRV to win. The outcome means that in a one-on-one race between the The Hurt Locker and Avatar, it’s highly likely that The Hurt Locker would have won – e.g., it would have been ranked ahead of Avatar on more ballots. That’s an obviously sensible standard to use when picking Best Picture of the year.

Check back in the coming days for more on the race, including our own interactive Best Picture poll. And for more information on instant runoff voting, visit FairVote and instantrunoff.com.

The Oscar Nominations Reflect Diverse Views -- and the Race is On

2011-01-25T06:09:00.000-08:00

Reflecting the choice voting method that doesn't allow any one faction of Academy voters to dominate the nomination process, a range of films earned one of the ten nominations for Best Picture this morning. The web is buzzing with news and analysis, with The King's Speech earning 12 nominations across the many Oscar categories, followed by True Grit with 10 nominations and The Social Network and Inception with 8.

In addition to The King's Speech, The Social Network and True Grit, seven motion pictures earned nominations for Best Picture, with a mix of Hollywood blockbusters and well-reviewed independent films with relatively minor budgets: Black Swan, The Fighter, True Grit, Kids Are All Right, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3 and Winter’s Bone.

As detailed in our post on the Oscar nomination voting progress, the Academy has relied on the choice voting method of proportional voting for more than a half century, realizing that it ensures a mix of nominees reflecting the full diversity of Academy voters' preferences. It must be working: the Oscar telecast is often the most watched program around the world.

How Oscar Nominees are Selected: Explaining choice voting

2011-01-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, January 25 at 8:30 am, we will learn which achievements have been nominated for each of the 2010 Academy Awards. This announcement, a precursor to the dramatic moment when the final envelopes will be torn open on the night of the ceremony, marks the end of the opening phase of Oscar season and the beginning of the home stretch. It also reflects the results of a nominating election among the 5,755 members of the academy using a proportional representation system known as choice voting or "single transferable vote." Referred to by academy officials as “preferential voting,” choice voting is designed to accommodate a large number of candidates while accurately reflecting the preferences of academy voters. It has been used to for Oscar nominations for more than six decades.

Although choice voting has gotten some bemused attention in the press – Kevin Fallon of the Atlantic calls it a “quirky” method that makes nominations hard to predict -- but despite a few Oscar-specific twists, the system isn’t all that complicated. With an eye to dispelling confusion, here is how the nominations work:

The 5,500 voting members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) are divided into voting groups based on their professional specialty. In the nominating elections, these groups vote only for candidates within their specialty – i.e. actors vote to nominate actors, directors to nominate directors, etc. Only in the Best Picture category do all 5,755 academy members get to vote in the nominating contest.

Each voter receives a ballot with five numbered slots for each category in which the voter is eligible to participate -- except in the case of Best Picture, for which 10 nominees are selected. Although each member gets only one vote, he or she is entitled to choose up to five potential nominees in order of preference (10 for Best Picture).

As explained in FairVote's choice voting video, all ballots are counted to see if any candidate receives a sufficient share of 1st choice rankings to guarantee a nomination: the "victory threshold." The victory threshold is the minimum share of the vote needed to secure a nomination. With ten nominees for Best Picture, the victory threshold is 1/11th of the vote plus one additional vote (or about 9.1%). With five nominees, the victory threshold is 1/6th (or 16.7%) plus one vote.

To see why this number is the victory threshold, imagine a race in which five – and only five – candidates receive exactly enough votes to garner a nomination. What is the fewest number of votes that each nominee could receive while still retaining more votes than every candidate that missed the cut? You might say 1/5th, or 20%, since there are 5 slots available. But the number can go even lower. Let’s say each of the 5 nominated films receives 1/6 of the vote plus one additional vote. This means that when we add up the total number of votes received by each of the 5 nominees, we get 5/6 of the total vote plus 5 additional votes. We notice that less than 1/6th of the vote remains to be distributed among all other candidates outside the top 5. This eliminates the possibility of any candidate outside of the top 5 receiving a share that ties any of the top 5 candidates, since any remaining candidate will necessarily have less than the 1/6 of the vote. Therefore 1/6th plus one vote is the minimum share of the vote per nominee needed to fill the top 5 in the first round, and any candidate in a category with five nominations receiving that share will automatically qualify as a nominee.

If any candidates cross the victory threshold, then they are selected as nominees and one of the five nomination slots is filled (with ten nominees now for Best Picture). But it would be quite unlikely that every slot would be filled in the first round. If open slots for nominations, voters’ backup choices are taken into account according to the following steps:

- The nominees that have passed the victory threshold are elected, and any excess votes beyond that threshold are distributed to the next choice on that ballot. Suppose, for example, The Social Network was the first choice of 20% of Academy voters. That number of votes would be enough for two nominations, so it's important to allow those voters to help pick two of the ten nominees, not just one. So about half of the value of each ballot goes to second choices at an equally reduced value while half of that value remains to nominate The Social Network. (There are different ways of distributing these surplus votes -- sometimes with a random selection of ballots, -- but having ballot count for a next choice at an equally reduced value is the fairest approach.)

- In most choice voting elections, the victory threshold remains constant, with the last winner sometimes falling short of it due to not every voter using all their potential rankings. According to Oscar analyst Steve Pond, the Academy keeps lowering the threshold after each winner to keep as many ballots in play as possible. Thus, if two actors have been nominated, and three remain, the threshold now becomes 1/4th of the remaining votes (meaning those votes not helping to nominate the first winner) plus one. This adjustment happens after each new nominee is selected.

- After all surplus votes are distributed, it is still likely that not all the nomination slots will be filled. At that point, the candidate with the fewest number of votes is eliminated. All ballots ranking that candidate as a top choice are counted instead for the candidate ranked next on that ballot.

- If these additional ballots push any candidates above the nomination threshold, then those candidates are selected as nominees. The process is repeated, with more candidates eliminated and their ballots redistributed until five candidates have been pushed above the number needed to advance.

(For those interested in reading more about the process of selecting nominees through the eyes of an expert on Oscar voting and history, check out Steve Pond’s article from the last Oscar season at The Wrap. This week, we will know the outcome of this selection process, and speculation about the eventual winners will begin in earnest. Here at OscarVotes123.com, we will be paying close attention to the other aspect of the Oscars’ “preferential voting” system – the use of instant runoff voting to determine the winner of the Best Picture category. Stay tuned!

Welcome back!

2011-01-24T06:30:00.000-08:00

With nominations for the 83rd Academy Awards due to be announced on Tuesday, January 25, we at OscarVotes123 welcome you back to our annual coverage of the Oscars!

This blog is dedicated to examining and explaining the voting methods used by the Academy to nominate candidates and select winners. While Academy officials are famously secretive about the selection process, the methods they use are no secret and, in fact, are used in elections by governments and organizations around the world. Join us in the coming days as we pull back the curtain on Oscar voting, explaining the selection process behind the biggest awards in show business.

Hurt Locker Wins Best Picture

2010-03-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

And the winner is............. The Hurt Locker! Congratulations to the cinematographers on their award.

The conventional wisdom boiled down to two contenders - Avatar and The Hurt Locker. The speculation is over and a favored film scored the top prize.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters used a preferential ballot with a tabulation system known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). As stated in previous posts, IRV is a majority voting system.

Regardless of the speculation, there was much suspense regarding which film would take the big prize. And that's how using IRV paid off for the Academy - they did multiple rounds of tabulations from a single ballot cast by each of the Academy's voters. There was no second, third or subsequent ballot to get a majority - how could you do such an effort and not risk blowing the suspense on Oscar night? No, by using a single preferential ballot, the Academy kept a lid on the winner until the envelope was opened in front of millions of viewers.

Perhaps The Hurt Locker got an outright majority of first choices and no runoff was needed? We'll never know because the Academy chooses to keep its tabulations secret.

The good folks at FairVote Minnesota did their own poll / election for best picture Oscar using IRV and The Hurt Locker won it also!

The Oscars are a promotional tool for movies. The Academy expanded the nominees for best picture from five to ten. Nine films still have the luster of "Nominated for Best Picture". But there still needed to be a majority winner - IRV met the needs of the Academy.

Congratulations are also in order to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on a wonderful awards ceremony.

See you next year at Oscar Votes 123!

Some Search For Perfect Election System

2010-02-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

There’s a good story in today’s Congress.org about IRV and the Academy Awards. It was a balanced article and I want to address some of the opposing comments. No election system is perfect, but that doesn’t stop critics from piling on IRV.

Anthony Gierzynski was quoted that with IRV;

"You start overwhelming voters and you start losing people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale,"

I hope that doesn’t mean that Americans are stupider than Australians or the Irish? I don’t think so.

Look at the situation where I live in Washington’s 3rd Congressional district. There’s an open US House seat where there are currently nine candidates running. That could mean that SW Washingtonians have an overwhelming number of choices on the ballot. But at least they’ll get only one choice in the primary – and that could hopefully soothe any fractured psyches.

But hey, Washington State has a two-round majority voting system. This means that if your first choices loses the August primary, you the voter, get a second choice in the November general election.

And perverse results? With nine candidates in the race – so far – that means the threshold to get into the top-two runoff is 11 percent. A candidate seemingly not favored to win can get into the general. KKK leader David Duke has gotten into the runoff and even elected in the Louisiana top-two majority voting system. The separate runoff is supposed to act like a “safety valve” where an extremist candidate like Duke cannot win the election itself when squared against another candidate in the general.

But he did get elected. Elections produce winners and losers – just because you don’t like the winner doesn’t mean you should dog-pile criticisms on the election rules. It’s like IRV has to somehow be more than perfect.

Then there’s Joyce McCloy and her wrecking ball style of political activism. Indeed, no election system is perfect – but neither is McCloy’s reasoning. Here’s her quote;

There will be people that lack confidence in the outcome, because whoever gets the most first choice votes may not win," McCloy said. "Whichever movie is the most mediocre could win, because it could get the most second- or third-place votes

Oh brother! First, IRV makes results that overwhelms voters, and now the results are mediocre! These criticisms are much like a handful of boiled spaghetti – throw it at a wall and see what sticks. IRV is new to most voters and the goal of these critics is to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Instead of conjecture regarding primary / general election dynamics, let’s look at what a University of Washington study on IRV says;

"In summary, one criticism leveled against RCV / IRV – that candidates who do not obtain the most votes in the initial iteration of voting can go on to win the election outright – is also a function of a traditional primary and general election dynamics."

I put the emphasis in bold because it brings us back to the point I made in the example regarding the open seat in Washington’s 3^rd CD. Would it be a big deal if the second place winner in the primary won the general election? And would any winner be mediocre? Perhaps to the many voters who will vote a second choice in the general election! And even if they were somehow mediocre - just like the article says – “whether or not that scenario is bad is a matter of opinion”

IRV is a majority voting system with similar characteristics as a two-round runoff. There was a need for IRV with the Academy Awards. And if voters think there’s a need for it in pubic elections, it will happen – as it does in places that use it. This is neither mediocre nor overwhelming, it just is.

Looking At Majority Voting Systems

2010-02-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

Who will win the Academy Award for Best Picture? According to the new rules for the Oscars, a majority of Academy members will decide.

This year there are ten nominees for Best Picture – the rules were changed from the previous number of five. With this wider field, I can see how the ballot tabulation rules needed to be reconsidered. With the old plurality system, ten nominees meant the threshold to win would have been 10% +1. That means a film with little support among members could win the Oscar.

This morning’s award announcements give us an opportunity look at majority voting systems. One way to conduct this kind of election is through multiple ballots. If there’s no majority on the first count, the last place vote getter is dropped off the list and ballots with the remaining nine are given to voters. If there’s no majority on the second ballot, the last place vote getter is dropped off the list and new ballots with the eight remaining nominees are given to voters. This process would continue until a majority (50% +1) picks the Best Picture.

Multiple ballots work good in places like meetings, conventions -where people are together. But when ballots need to be mailed to voters, the logistics can be cumbersome. Washington State has a majority voting system that winnows candidates down to the top two vote getters. There’s a primary election followed by another Top-Two election at a later date.

With either of these systems, some voters, whose first choice was knocked out in a round of counting, have to then consider a second choice on a later ballot. To accommodate this dynamic, the Academy used a preferential ballot. Voters rank their choices on a single ballot. For example, you put “Avatar” as your first choice and “The Hurt Locker” as second, “District Nine” as third and so on down the ballot. This way, Academy members are mailed a single ballot. And tabulation is basically the same; if there’s a majority on first count, the election is over. If not, the last place vote getter is dropped and that nominee's voters second, third and subsequent choices are distributed to the films remaining in the counting. This process continues until the majority threshold is met.

With expanding the number of nominees for an Oscar, the Academy needed to look at voting methods. Ranked ballots didn't create all the choices - it only accommodates them. And by giving members choices by preference, a voter can feel invested in more films. It's like. "Heck, my first choice lost but I did rank the winner high on my ballot so I'm happy."

Krist Novoselic serves as Chair of FairVote Board of Directors.

IRV versus Sandra Bullock?

2010-01-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

Livejournaler Pigeonrat has a good grasp of the implications of the new instant runoff voting system being used by the Motion Picture Academy to choose their Best Picture winner. After Sandra Bullock's Golden Globes win, Pigeonrat wonders if IRV, if applied to Best Actor/Actress might not give us a better idea of who really deserves the performance awards.

Imagine that there are 100 voters, and only three nominees: Sandra, Gabbie, and Carey. Of those 100 voters, 40 believe Sandra should win, and 60 believe that either Gabbie or Carey should win, but that either of them would be better than Sandra. In other words, 60 of the 100 voters believe that ANYONE but Sandra should win.

After seeing how IRV changes the dynamics, Pigeonrat shows how IRV gives us a consensus winner: the actress taking home the award will not be the one disliked by most voters. We'll only get to see IRV in play for Best Picture, but perhaps folks will like the result and decide it can be applied more broadly. We'll see!

Producers Guild Uses IRV to Pick 'Hurt Locker'

2010-01-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

Catch your breath -- it can be quite overwhelming, award show after award show. What will the this or that award by the something-or-other guild foretell about the Oscars? Awards fans must be exhausted by the time the Academy gives out its prize.

But for our purposes, one award show really is worth taking a look at, and may in fact be a harbinger of things to come. The Producers Guild, whose awards were doled out last night, also decided to use the instant runoff system for choosing their Best Picture award shortly after the Motion Picture Academy announced their decision to do the same.

The surprise winner was Hurt Locker, a small-budget film that goes against the usual common wisdom of the Producers Guild awarding habits. As Tom O'Neil at the LA Times puts it:

Some kudos watchers believed that the guild would automatically pick "The Dark Knight" as best picture last year because producers care a lot about their films' succeeding financially. "The Dark Knight" was not only the top-earning movie of 2008 ($531 million in the U.S., $997 million worldwide) but the second-biggest-grossing pic of all time, surpassed only by "Titanic" ($1.8 billion worldwide in 1997).

But "Slumdog Millionaire" was a fantastic financial success in other ways. Produced for only $14 million, it went on to gross $377 million worldwide. Not so "The Hurt Locker," which was produced for $11 million and sold only $16-million worth of tickets at the box office.

The best explanation for this upset, then, is that a majority of Guild members thought it was really good, and there existed a consensus among the members that inspired enough of them to rank it highly enough for it to pass big monster films like Avatar, which may have had a good number of first-choice votes, and might have won using a different system, but not enough folks ranking it highly for it to survive the instant runoffs. This is essentially Steve Pond's take as well (who was surprised to learn that the PGA even used IRV).

Since the Oscars will also use IRV, it stands to reason that usually-predictive power of the Producers Guild may continue to hold true. If there's a soft spot in the majority of Academy members' hearts for Hurt, then what might be a rabid minority for Avatar or Inglorious Basterds may leave disappointed.

The Wizard of IRV - The Oscars Get Preferential

2010-01-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

Let's say you're pitting The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington against each other for an Oscar for Best Picture. Tough call, right? You'd have to guess that the vote would be pretty well split among these three huge contenders: the most reconizable musical fantasy in history, the defining romance of Hollywood's Golden Age, and the definitive David versus Goliath political drama. Fans of one kind of movie may or may not be fans of the others, and certainly, you would have to assume that if those who voted for Mr. Smith, say, couldn't get their first choice, they'd want to weigh in on who between the other two movies did win.

Let's make it even tougher. Now let's go nuts and throw in not two but seven other films. Dark Victory; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; Love Affair; Ninotchka; Of Mice and Men; Stagecoach; and Wuthering Heights.

Holy moly.

I know what you're thinking: With all these amazing classics all vying for the top prize, you could easily have a ten-way split! The winner could squeak by with a meager 11%, and worst of all, it could be the movie that most people didn't want to win. The winner could theoretically be the film opposed by 89% of those who voted.

But this is the choice the Motion Picture Academy faced in 1939. Ten really strong nominees. How could they ever decide?

They used instant runoff voting (IRV). In the parlance of the movie biz, they usually refer to it as "preferential voting," but it's the same thing. Voters rank their choices in order of preference (1, 2, 3, etc.). If no movie is the first choice of a majority, the film with the least first-choice votes is elliminated and the second choices of those voters are distributed. This process continues until we have a winner over the 50% mark, ensuring a majority consensus winner. In 1939, it gave us Gone with the Wind as the winner. The last time they used IRV was in 1943. Since then, they moved to five nominees, with the winner selected by mere plurality (first-past-the-post).

Last year, the Academy changed its mind again, and declared that for 2009, the old ways were the best ways. 2009's ceremony will see 10 nominated films compete for the Oscar under the IRV rules once again. This site is dedicated to taking a fun look at how this voting system, which works so well in political races, will change the game for the Oscars. IRV is great for elected office--it helps ensure majority consensus and eliminates the spoiler problem (when strong third parties tip a race one way or the other). We think it will be great for Oscar, too.

So keep coming back here for an exciting look at how this electoral reform is changing the way we do the Oscars. We'll be making sure to clear up misunderstandings and mistakes made by people who are just discovering IRV, and just like you, we'll be watching very closely who gets nominated, and who comes out on top.

Rumors of a Consensus Choice Among Possible Nominees?

2010-01-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

Acadmey Award nominees haven't been announced yet, but already bets are being placed on the Best Picture Oscar winner, and quite a few prognosticators are setting their sites on Inglorious Basterds--and that would be due to the new instant runoff (or "preferential") system by which the winner will be selected.

Writes Tom O'Neil at the LA Times:

I admit that "Basterds" probably won't get the most first-place votes, but a weighted ballot is being used this year. Academy members are ranking all 10 contenders. While chatting with many voters, I hear widely divergent opinions of "Avatar," "The Hurt Locker," "Precious" and "Up in the Air," but support for "Basterds" is strong and consistent. That's why it is the most formidable contender of all.

This is also the view at InContention.com:

As you surely know, this will be the first year the Academy uses preferential voting in the Best Picture race, determining the winner based on rankings rather than single votes. This ostensibly favors the most broadly liked (or least resented) film in contention. It could be that an “Up in the Air” benefits more from the system than a polarizing oddity like “Basterds,” but visible support across the branches can only help.

And that's the idea behind IRV: in the political context, when many candidates run, you want to make sure the winner is someone that the most possible voters can live with, rather than elect someone with a tiny plurality who is hated by the vast majority.

Over at the Movie Blog, the point is well understood as to why the system had to change:

To make this abosultely clear, it doesn’t matter [under the old system] if 82% of the Academy dispise the movie, if it gets more votes than any other, it is the Best Picture. Even though there’s rarely really a five-horse race in the category, it’s kinda depressing if you think that any of the movies to receive the honour may only have received the thumbs up from a fifth of the membership. Well, either that or it helps explain strange victories like Shakespeare in Love. Maybe it only got 22% of the votes!

While yours truly is a big fan of Shakespeare in Love, actually, the point is well taken. It seems like Crash, for example, was an odd duck winner in 2006 considering that the multiple-award-winning Brokeback Mountain was also in the mix--but who knows what would have happened with a little instant runoff to settle the question. We'll get to find out for this year's crop.

Don't Panic! The IRV System for Best Pic Isn't So Tough to Get

2010-01-05T09:03:00.000-08:00

Timothy Gray of Variety tries his darndest to explain the new IRV system for the Best Picture award, and he seems a little overwhelmed. He shouldn't, of course, because it's not nearly as complicated as he thinks. He writes:

. . . for best pic, there are 10 noms. So the preferential system will be used . . . And, you may ask, in a world that’s already complicated, why are they making things more difficult? Why not just go with the first-place vote? Excellent question. Here are the reasons: By using the preferential system here, [PriceWaterhouseCoopers] and the Acad avoid the possibility of a film winning with only 11% of the votes and avoid the possibility of a tie.

How is this so? Sorry, I’m not going to explain it. It’s too complicated and you’re asking too many questions. Trust me, it’s true.

It's not complicated at all! A film could win with 11% of the vote because there are 10 nominees, and it's possible that all 10 could fare very roughly the same, splitting the vote essentially evenly. In that scenario ( which isn't as unlikely as you might think, particularly if there's a field of similarly-strong contenders) the winner would be the one that snuck past the 10% mark, even if just barely. That's hardly grounds to consider any film a consensus choice of the Academy, so in that light, using IRV makes perfect sense. And this is also why it makes so much sense to use IRV with multi-candidate fields in political elections.

But Gray gets it, and you can see, it's not so tough to grasp after all:

OK, so the PWC pros form 10 piles for best pic, one for each film. They go through the first-place choices. And the film with the lowest number of first-place votes is eliminated. Then they take the nine remaining films, and go through the second-place choices. Again, the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. In all, they will do eight rounds of this.

At the end, the winning film will have 50% of the votes plus one.

Correct! That wasn't so bad, was it?

For a quick, handy guide to IRV, just click here.

Motion Picture Academy Adopts Instant Runoff Voting for Best Picture

2009-09-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science announced this week that it will use instant runoff voting to choose its honoree for Best Picture, ensuring that the most celebrated movie of the year is one with strong support among Academy members. Used by the Academy in Best Picture voting before 1945, which was the last time ten pictures were nominated, instant runoff voting (IRV) is a system in which voters rank their preferences in order of choice. The nominee with the fewest votes is eliminated, and ballots cast for that film are moved to voter's next choice among the remaining films. The process continues until one film has more than half the votes and is declared Best Picture of the Year.

Recommended by Robert's Rules of Order for elections when voters can't gather together in person, IRV (also called "preferential voting") is used by organizations with tens of thousands of members like the American Association of University Women, American Chemical Society, American Medical Student Association, American Mensa, and the American Political Science Association. At least 51 colleges and universities use IRV for student elections, including UCLA, the University of Oklahoma, Harvard and Stanford. More than a dozen cities have adopted IRV for election to their top offices, including Memphis (TN), Minneapolis (MN), Oakland (CA) and San Francisco (CA). In 2002, President Barack Obama was the prime sponsor of pro-IRV legislation in Illinois, and Sen. John McCain backed a pro-IRV ballot measure.

Academy voters already appreciate the value of ranking candidates. Since the 1930s, the Academy has used the choice voting method of proportional voting to nominate best picture and most other categories. With choice voting, Academy members rank candidates just as with IRV, but it takes about a fifth of the vote to secure one of five nominations. Choice voting ensures that nearly all Academy members help nominate at least one nominee for best picture and other categories.

Earlier this year, the Academy announced that it would expand the Best Picture category from five to 10 nominees. Given that the nomination threshold will now be about a tenth of the vote, keeping the "first-past-the-post" voting system where voters can indicate a preference for just one choice would theoretically allow a film to take home the Oscar despite being potentially disliked by 89%. With IRV in place, the Best Picture winner is sure to be preferred by a large share of Academy members. This demonstrates how IRV improves single-seat political elections when more than two candidates run--because voters can rank their choices on their ballots, third party and independent candidates are no longer potential "spoilers," and no one takes office with small pluralities, but are far more likely to be the consensus choice of the majority.

"It's encouraging to see the Motion Picture Academy wisely adopt instant runoff voting," said Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote, a nonpartisan election reform organization that supports IRV. "It serves as another example of how IRV can not only improve how we pick our favorite movies, but how we can have more meaningful choices for leaders and representatives in our elections for public office."

[This post was adapted from a press release by FairVote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that educates and enlivens discourse on how best to achieve a democracy that respects every voice and every vote.]