"Adding another hurdle to this year's Oscar race, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will use a preferential voting system in tallying the final vote for best picture, where 10 nominees will be competing.

In all other categories, the victory goes to the performer or crafts¬person who earns the most votes, because members vote for one choice among the five nominees.

In the case of best picture, however, voters will be asked to rank their preference from 1 to 10, with 1 being best. It's the same preferential voting system that the Academy uses in its nominating process, but it hasn't been used in best picture voting since 1945.

The Academy has opted to use the preferential system in the best picture race because it realized that with a field of 10 nominees, a winner could emerge with just slightly more than 580 votes out of the potential voting pool of 5,800 members.

The preferential system is designed to measure depth of support, since second- and third-place choices can be just as important as first-place choices. "PricewaterhouseCoopers will then be able to establish the best picture recipient with the strongest support of a majority of our electorate," Academy president Tom Sherak said.

Under the system, ballots are first separated according to first-place choices. If one film wins a majority among all first-place votes, it's the winner.

If not, the film with the fewest number of first-place votes is eliminated and the No. 2 choices on those ballots are redistributed among the remaining films. The process continues until one film has picked up a majority of votes.

The process creates an added obstancle for Oscars campaigners, who will have to work to ensure they pick up as much wide support from Academy members as possible, because earning the gold trophy won't be a simple matter of amassing the most No. 1 votes.

As strategists absorbed the news, there was no immediate consensus on whether the preferential system might favor one type of film over another."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... e26ef2f54e

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I other words, the film with most #1 votes might still lose Best Picture if it is very much a love/hate film.

I'm not a fan. A film can win by getting a ton of 3-5 votes. Not cool

If they had used this system in the past:
*1998 - Saving Private Ryan would've beaten Shakespeare in Love
*1999 - American Beauty would've won by an even greater margin
*2000 - Gladiator would've won by an even greater margin
*2001 - Fellowship of the Ring or Moulin Rouge might have beaten A Beautiful Mind
*2002 - Chicago would've won by an even greater margin
*2003 - Return of the King would've won in the first round without any second choice votes needed to be counted
*2004 - Million Dollar Baby would've won by an even greater margin
*2005 - Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain would be a closer race but Crash probably would still prevail
*2006 - The Departed would've won by an even greater margin
*2007 - No Country for Old Men would've won by an even greater margin
*2008 - Slumdog Millionaire would've won by an even greater margin

Crash would've lost.

At least it's better than the weighted system (where No. 1 is counted as 10 points, and No. 10 1 point), in which case the blockbusters will be even more favored.

To think of it more, I don't think I really dislike the idea.

TDK was fuckin robbed, the oscars are pure shit.

Yup. How could they give two of them to TDK and nominate it six more times. It deserves 0, noms and wins.

They should just award points to first second and third place votes like the Heisman if they aren't gonna pick the winner with the most first place votes then. That would be more fair.

Why are they making it so unnecessarily complicated?

It was the Academy can go fuck themselves

so, instead of films needing enough of a passionate following to win, it's now gonna be more about which film pleased everyone. the Academy's picks this decade have been generally meh, but this doesn't seem like it's gonna make it any better.

As I see it, changing to the preferential ballot system was needed for the Best Picture category now that it will have 10 nominees.

Imagine the academy voting across 10 different films with the "one vote for one film" method. As was said elsewhere, if we say there are 6,000 academy members, a film could win Best Picture with only 601 votes. And the margin of win could conceivably be close often. This is clearly problematic.

I'm happy with the change. For me, the Academy's decision to expand to 10 nominees and to vote for a winner using a preferential ballot system has made this year incredibly exciting for me.

Peace,
Mike

We won't know the break down of the results anyway so how is that exciting?

I didn't mean to imply that it would be exciting because we would know the voting breakdown. I mean it is exciting because 10 nominees allow for the possible increased inclusion of animated/blockbuster/documentary/foreign films in the Best Picture category. And now deserving films may be able to overcome genre biases and even get a shot at winning with a new preferential ballot voting system. It's just the shake up I've been waiting for.

Peace,
Mike

Great news for Pixar films.