When one thinks of experiments in voting systems, you rarely think of motion pictures.  About a decade ago (starting with the 2009 awards), the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) changed the rules for picking the Academy Award (Oscar) for best picture.  They made an additional change several years ago to the nomination process for Best Picture.

For most of the awards, the rules are that academy members belong to a given branch (e.g. actors, writers, etc.) and each member gets to submit a “nomination” ballot for the awards given by their branch  (i.e. actors for the acting awards, directors for best director).  Potential nominees who meet a certain threshold (up to 5 total) become the nominees.  After nominations are announced, a second ballot goes out to all academy members who vote for one nominee.  The nominee who gets the most votes (the traditional first-past-the-post system) is the winner.

In choosing the nominees, however, AMPAS has used a “single transferable vote” system for picking nominees.  This system is similar to the one used in Ireland and in Australia (for Senate elections).   In this system, voters list multiple candidates with a rank next to each candidate.  There is a certain number of votes (quota) needed for a nomination (the total number of votes plus one divided by the available slots plus one).  If a potential nominee received more than the require number of votes, their excess votes are distributed to the second choice of the voters.  There are variations on how the distribution works.  Some randomly pick excess ballots.  Others assign a fraction of all ballot (i.e. if 10% of your ballots are excess, each ballot counts as 0.1 votes in the next round).   For most of the awards, AMPAS uses a fractional system with one catch — surpluses are distributed only if the nominee exceeds the required number of votes by more than 20%.    After the excess ballots are distributed, the process moves to the bottom ranked candidates.  Those candidates are eliminated and those votes are  redistributed to the second choice of the voters.  (Or third or fourth choice depending upon who is already nominated or eliminated.)  This process continues until all the slots are filled. Continue Reading...