Oscar-watchers, this is for you.
The nomination ballots for the 80th Academy Awards are due this Saturday at 5 p.m. PST, at which point a team of about a dozen accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers will tabulate the votes. It will take seven days of counting to determine the nominees. It takes that long because the Academy uses the rather complicated preferential-voting system. Furthermore, the counting is done by hand. That’s right — in an age of computers, the Oscar nominations are still determined by moving thousands of paper ballots into pile after pile after pile.
Since this process seems so contrary to public perception, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited a group of journalists to a demonstration of the voting procedure. Accountants Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas, who will lead the balloting process for the Academy this year (and, thereby, will be the only two people in the world to know the actual winners before the show airs), conducted a mock voting tabulation for the 1939 Best Actress race. We journalists voted for nominees and then observed what happened to our ballots.
The following is a detailed and yet hopefully clear description of exactly how the Oscar nominees are determined.
(1) The Academy is made up of approximately 6,000 members. Each member belongs to a branch — the directing branch, the writing branch, the cinematography branch, etc. You can’t belong to multiple branches, so the Coen brothers are out of luck even though they direct, write, and edit their movies.
(2) Each branch votes within its own category: Actors vote for all the acting categories; directors vote in the direction category; and so on. Everybody gets to vote for Best Picture.
(3) Voters are asked to list up to five names, ranked inorder of preference. The Academy instructs voters to "follow theirhearts" because the voting process doesn’t penalize for pickingeccentric choices, as we will see. Also, listing the same person orfilm twice doesn’t help their cause — in fact, it actually
diminishes the chance that the voter’s ballot will be counted at all.
(4) A "magic number" is devised for each award category. Thisnumber is calculated by taking the total number of ballots received forthat category and dividing it by the number of possible nominees plusone. So, for Best Actress, say that 600 ballots were received. Thereare always five nominees chosen for Best Actress, so you divide 600ballots by six (five potential nominees plus one), which equals 100.That’s your magic number.
(5) The magic number is important because as soon as apotential nominee reaches that number, they automatically become anofficial nominee. And so, the counting begins…
(6) The ballots are sorted into piles based upon each voter’sfirst-choice selection. A nominee must have at least one first-choicevote to be eligible. If any nominee reaches the magic number basedsolely upon first-choice selections, they’re in. So, for the 1939 race,let’s say Bette Davis received 125 first-choice votes. She’s now anofficial nominee, and all the ballots that listed her as a first-choiceare set aside — those ballots are done.
(7) We now have four nominee slots left to fill. The actresswho received the fewest first-place votes is eliminated, and thoseballots are redistributed to the other piles based upon those voters’second-place selections and another round of tabulations begin. Let’ssay Vivien Leigh started out with 98 first-choice votes, and now hasreceived two more votes from ballots that were redistributed. She hasreached the magic number (100) — she’s in! All the ballots in VivienLeigh’s pile are set aside.
(8) This process is continued. The actress who has the fewestballots in her pile has those ballots redistributed to other pilesbased upon the voters’ second-choice selections, and if need be, theirthird-choice, fourth-choice, and fifth-choice selections. If a ballotruns out of selections, that ballot is voided and is no longer in play,which is why it’s important for voters to list five different nominees.
(9) The magic number will drop as ballots are voided. Forinstance, if 12 ballots are voided, the new magic number becomes 588divided by 6 = 98.
(10) Actresses continue to be eliminated and ballots redistributeduntil five nominees reach the most current magic number, OR until thereare only 5 nominees left in the running.
And there you have it. What this process means is that it’s betterto have a small but passionate group of voters who love your film thana larger but less passionate group. And it explains how a small foreignmovie such as City of God was nominated in four majorcategories — it inspired enough supporters who most likely placed itNo. 1 or No. 2 on their ballots to let it squeak into the final five.Having a lot of No. 4 or No. 5 votes isn’t as advantageous becausemost of those ballots will have already been counted toward anotherfilm.
And in case you’re wondering, the procedure for choosing the Oscarwinner is much simpler. Once the nominations are decided, the entireAcademy can vote for every category. Each member gets one vote percategory, and the nominee that receives the most votes wins. It takesthe accountants only three days to determine those winners.
Academy voters are discouraged from voting in categories they don’tfully understand (who knows exactly what sound editing is?), and fromvoting in categories in which they haven’t seen all the nominees. Buttry convincing a member not to vote in a certain technical category —checking boxes is just way too much fun.
So, when the nominations are announced on the morning of Jan. 22,now you know how and why about 1,700 "person-hours" went into theeffort. Let’s hope there still is an actual Academy Awards show thisyear. At the voting demonstration, Sid Ganis, the Academy’s president,said the show was on and that they are doing everything they normallywould be doing right now. But, only time (and many disgruntled writers)will tell.
How much are you hoping the Oscars will go on this year? And pleasetell me that my explanation of the voting process made sense.
Comments (1-30) of 39 Add your comment
Who knew it took that much work? Great explanation!
I love the preferential voting system! I always understood and respected it!
Wow – who knew? I’m glad I do now. Thanks!
Thanks so much for the explanation, I didn’t know any of that before! I really hope the Oscars go on this year. It is to me what the Superbowl is to most other people.
Great information. Thanks!
That’s so good to know! I really really hope I don’t have to cancel my annual Oscars watching partey
Wow, it’s complicated, but great explanation. I knew only the people working in a certain category decided on the nominees, but not how they were actually decided. Very interesting !
By the way, did the journalists come up with new nominees for the 1939 Best Actress ?
I want to know who the journalist’s nominees vs. the actual 1939 noms and who won.
Wow, that’s insane. It makes sense though, and I rather like that they do it that way. Thanks for the explanation!
This is the most informative Popwatch post ever–thank you! Fascinating information!
You’d think to save time, money, energy, etc., someone would have been able to design a computer than uses scantron technology, or even an internet voting system. That’s jut the university administrator in me though. Thank you thought for a PopWatch article I have actually enjoyed and found informative instead of the crap that this blog has decayed into. I am sick of reading puff pieces on what song is super popular or what actor wore what or is doing whoever. Let us go back to the glory days of articles like this with writers like Whitty P brightning my day!
Thank You for the excellent explanation! Very concise, and quite understandable. I for one very much hope the show will go on this year, writers or none. OSCAR speaks for Himself!
Wow, it really is like voting for prom queen.
Who’d a thunk it? Great blog John!
This is very helpful — only it might be good to remind people that some of the categories are *not* voted on by everybody: Foreign Film, Documentary and both shorts categories.
This is very helpful — only it might be good to remind people that some of the categories are *not* voted on by everybody: Foreign Film, Documentary and both shorts categories.
Great explanation, but I would have to read again to understand it fully. Anyways, I hope the Oscars go on as planned this year. I need my Oscar fashion!!!!
“Accountants Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas, who will THE lead the balloting process for the Academy this year “…what is the THE there for?
Don’t know if anyone chimed in, but I think by now the difference between “best sound” and “best sound editing” is pretty clear. “Sound” is the overall sound of the movie, “Sound Editing” is sound effects.
So I guess there is some merit to the whole “It was an honor just to be nominated” business, considering the nominations are done by your peers in their particular field, not all the other academy members who may or may not have actual insight into doing that job, like the actual voting is.
Great article. Thanks.
But….wouldn’t it be easier and a more exact selection if each of the five possible nominees were assigned points. First choice = 5 points, second choice = 4 points, etc. Then just choose the nominees according to who scored the most points?
That explanation was stellar, and I find the information fascinating. What an intricate nigh unto Byzantine process. As for the Academy Awards being cancelled…do not even go there. Academy Award night is second only to Christmas Eve at my house. If you cancel the Academy Awards, you are essentially canceling Christmas in my heart. And if that is wrong, my friends, then I don’t wanna be right.
Very cool and informative – thanks! And yes, if the Oscars don’t go on, they will definitely be missed in my circle of friends, who have an Oscar bash every year.
Great article, John! This satisfies not only my awards-obsessed side, but also my statistics and logic-obsessed side.
Very informative blog, but I still believe all award shows suck because: 1) The Wire has not been nominated. for anything. However, 2) Crash won best picture oscar. I will miss the red carpet this year, though.
This was such an interestig article – felt like I was reading “Slate” for a moment! Thanks for reporting this!
I agree with “RightNextToMars”.This satisfies not only my awards-obsessed side, but also my statistics and logic-obsessed side. And It’s OSCARS BIRTHDAY. My 15th Party would be cancelled.
POSITIVE COMMENT
Thanks for this overview. Any chance voters might “follow their hearts” with the movie “Once”? One key fan in its corner is Steven Spielberg, who described it as a “little film” which gave him “enough inspiration to last the rest of the year.” I was surprised not to see it on your best film picks.
What’s really unfortunate, and what really takes away from the Oscars’ credibility is that for final voting (once the nominees are determined), all branches can vote for the eventual winners. So instead of just actors voting for actors or directors voting for directors, people who have nothing to do with a particular field are voting for it. That’s how the voting blocs are created and that is wrong.