A brief discussion of the voting rules by Al Mrk

I'm back, briefly, to discuss the voting method for Best Picture. In 2010, the academy changed the voting to preferential ballot. Voters actually list all the the nominees on the ballot, from 1 to 9. When the votes are counted if a movie receives 50% plus 1 of the votes cast it becomes the winner. But with nine nominees this is very unlikely. And this is where the voters' second place choices come in.

After this first round, the last place movie is eliminated. But it's votes actually stay in - the second place movie on each ballot is then cast and the votes are redistributed. What this means is that last place movie (ninth place, this year) is actually very important, as it's second place votes are guaranteed to be counted, whereas the third place movie is actually not. It will stay on ballot without any chance of winning.

This process is repeated, with the last place movie being dropped each round, until a winner is found. My understanding is that this process was chosen to ensure winners have a broad base of support, and have to receive s substantial number of second place votes. It also allows votes to support more than one movie, which is fair as many people have several movies they enjoyed during the year.