The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) uses ranked-choice voting to decide which nominee will win the Oscar for Best Picture. First of all, ranked-choice voting is not, as Variety claimed in 2020, “exactly” the Oscars equivalent of the Electoral College. But, unlike Variety, many of the critics of this system might actually have a point. Most, like opinion writers in Vox and Business Insider, argue that ranked-choice voting leads to boring, run-of-the-mill movies winning. They lament the fact that more daring movies that would perhaps win a plurality struggle to get ahead in a ranked-choice system. Instead, a Condorcet-winning movie that is tame but would beat the bolder movies in a head-to-head is more likely to win a ranked-choice system. This makes sense because more “moderate” or “middle-of-the-road” candidates tend to win political ranked-choice elections. Indeed, this is what is seen in the majority of recent Oscars Best Picture winners – movies like The King’s Speech, The Artist, Argo, Birdman, and Green Book are all considered broadly liked, but not particularly daring.
However, as we discussed in class, there is no voting system that guarantees a Condorcet winner will always triumph. In the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election, although Roemer was the Condorcet winner, Edwards had enough support to beat him. This likely explains the recent wins of movies like Spotlight, Moonlight and Parasite that were untraditional and beat out more mild movies (e.g., Moonlight beat La La Land). When these movies have enough fervent support they can beat out movies like La La Land that might be a lot of people’s second choice (as Roemer was in 1991 in Louisiana). All this is to say, I think critics of the Oscars have an interesting point, but they can be more careful in decrying ranked-choice voting. While the system does often reward safe movies, I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s rigged against gutsy movies.
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