Memo to Oscar voters:
I didn’t want to write this again. I’ve been writing about Oscar ranked voting and how you really can’t game the system for about 13 years, ever since I told the story of the Academy going to what they called preference voting in the newly expanded in the Best Picture category on my first day at TheWrap in 2009.
I have written about it many, many times since, and even made a video about it. But there are a lot of new members of the Academy these days, and I’ve gotten some questions lately that make it clear how many voters don’t understand that one of the strengths of ranked election is that you don’t have to try. to get cute with your ticket.
Unlike any other category at the Oscars, where you simply vote for your favorite, that ballot asks you to rank the Best Picture nominees in order of preference, from 1 to 10. And that ranking throws up a lot of red flags for the people who worry that they might hurt their #1 pick by voting for something lower on the ballot.
At the Producers Guild Awards last weekend, an Oscar-nominated producer called me to explain the system to an Oscar-nominated writer. And the main question the producer wanted to address was one I’ve heard a lot: If you really want to help your favorite movie, isn’t it better to vote it #1 and leave the rest of your ticket? white?
The answer to that question is no, that doesn’t work. anything to help your film. If you put your favorite movie at number 1, nothing else you can do is going to hurt it. If you don’t win, it’s not your fault, but if you don’t win and you didn’t rank anything else on your ballot, you’ve taken away your own chance to have a say in what you win, and you’ve made it a little easier for whatever, too. that wins
Here, once again, with Oscar voting beginning Thursday morning and running through March 7, is how it works and why it matters.
You have 10 places on your ballot, but you are not awarding 10 points to your first choice, 9 points to your second choice, etc. You are casting a single vote for a single movie: the one that ranks first on your ballot.
So that’s where the counting begins, with all the ballots separated into 10 piles depending on which movie ranks first.
This year, there are 9,579 eligible voters in the Academy. To win Best Picture, you need more than half of the votes, so if all eligible members voted, a movie would need 4,790 first-place votes. (If 90% of them voted, it would take 4,311). However, it’s reasonable to assume that no film would get more than half of the first-place votes. In that case, the film with the fewest number of first-place votes is eliminated, and each of its ballots is placed in the pile of the film ranked second on that ballot.
If that’s not enough to push a film over the 50% threshold, the count will continue round after round, with the last-place film eliminated and its ballots shifted to the voters’ No. 2 choice, unless that choice is already has been eliminated, in which case, voting will go to the highest ranked film still in the running.
In the early rounds, voters’ second and third choices will often come into play; in later rounds, he could go as high as seventh, eighth, and even ninth. The process is designed to find the movie with the most widespread support. That could be the movie that got the most No. 1 votes (in every mock count I’ve ever done, it has), but it could also be a movie with fewer No. 1s but more mainstream support.
But here’s what to keep in mind: Your vote will stay with the movie you ranked first unless that movie is eliminated. If it is removed, nothing you have done could have prevented that removal, because you were voting for it until the bitter end. If Voter A ranks film X first on their ballot and also fills in all other spaces on that ballot, while Voter B ranks film X number 1 and leaves the rest of their ballot blank, there is absolutely no difference in how much those two voters helped Movie X.
But there is a difference in how those two voters will affect the winner. Once Movie X is removed, Voter A’s ballot will go to their favorite movie that is still in the running. This voter will keep his vote until the end.
However, Voter B’s ballot will be discarded once Movie X is removed, because there is nothing else on the list. This has two effects: it means that voter B no longer has a say in what she wins for Best Picture, and it lowers the magic number the winner must hit.
Remember, you need more than 50% of the vote to win Best Picture, so for every two ballots that are thrown out because voters didn’t rank enough movies, the winning number is reduced by one.
Look, if you really think (hypothetically) “Triangle of Sadness” is great and all the other Best Picture nominees are terrible, and you honestly don’t care what wins if it’s not “Triangle,” then I guess you could save yourself a minute. by not filling out the entire ballot.
but if you have any kind of opinion about the other movies (you have seen everyone, right?), then you must do what the ticket asks you to. Put your favorite movie in #1 and your least favorite movie in #10 (where never get your vote), and rank everything else in between. What will he do nothing to hurt your favorite movie, and just as important, it will do nothing to hurt your ability to have a say in this election. And when you complain about the winner, at least you’ll know you participated instead of making things easy for whatever horrible movie won.
By the way, the producer I talked about at the beginning of this story did not advocate the “leave nine blank spaces” strategy; they were just looking for an explanation as to why that strategy didn’t accomplish anything. (Mind you, I’ve been around a few growers who definitely championed that strategy.)
And when I provided that explanation in the lobby of the Producers Guild Awards, the writer I mentioned immediately said, “Oh, then I should fill in all the spaces on my ballot.”
Right, that writer should, and I’m pretty sure he will. And if you’re an Oscar voter, you should too.
