And the Award goes to... Rank-choice!: A Brief Analysis of the Oscars

The Oscar Awards have been around for around 92 years now. The very first awards were presented in May of 1929, and around 6 months later, the worse economic disaster in history brought America and the World to its knees. Among other such disasters, the Oscar Awards have always been mired in controversy and cronyism. The Hollywood Elite simply hand each other awards and pat their friends on the back. However, in recent years, efforts have been made to change the mechanics of the Oscars. As of December 2020, there are now 9,427 eligible Oscar voters, which represents the largest pool of voters in the history of the award ceremony. Now more than ever, a definite system of voting must be enacted in order to determine the pinnacle of filmmaking achievement: the Best Picture Award. The system chosen for such a lofty task is (drum roll please)... Rank-choice Voting. While seemingly dull sounding, this particular system scratches an itch which frequently annoys Economists: the Condorcet Paradox, where cycling would inevitably occur without determining an outcome. Under Rank-choice, statistically, the Condorcet winner, defined as a winner of an election who would win in a pairwise election against any single candidate in the race, is more likely to be chosen, but not so often as the Coombs or Borda systems. Rank-choice places emphasis on rank, allowing voter preferences to be more equitably distributed and represented. All of the voter preferences are considered and signified by their ranks. Hundreds of films are submitted to the Oscars and the top films must achieve 5% of the 1st place ranks to be considered in the next round, which usually means the top 10. When voting officially for Best Picture, the Oscar voting system actually becomes a hybrid of Rank-choice and Borda. The voters place all 10 films considered for best picture in their individual ranked lists. Afterwards, Film A could receive 30% of the 1st place votes while Film B receives only 20% of the 1st place votes but 80% of the 2nd place votes. Instead of Film A winning, Film B has accrued enough "points" (points in quotations because it is not mentioned that the films receive points, but the system mimics Borda which utilizes points) from the overwhelming second place votes to win Best Picture. Even though it's a complex system, it still represents more of the voters' preferences and we, the public, can finally see what the best movie is (ha ha ha).