Oscar voting algebra

Very interesting analysis piece in the New Yorker about the Oscar nominations.

In addition to expanding the best picture nominees from five to ten this year, there's been a big change in the way votes are cast for the top award. In the past, members voted for their favorite picture, and the nominee with the most votes won. Not so starting this year. Who knew you would need a degree in higher mathematics to understand the rules:

Members—there are around fifty-eight hundred of them—are being asked to rank their choices from one to ten. In the unlikely event that a picture gets an outright majority of first-choice votes, the counting’s over. If not, the last-place finisher is dropped and its voters’ second choices are distributed among the movies still in the running. If there’s still no majority, the second-to-last-place finisher gets eliminated, and its voters’ second (or third) choices are counted. And so on, until one of the nominees goes over fifty per cent.

The story also says the two frontrunners are Avatar and Hurt Locker, and it makes the case for why the Hurt Locker might actually win. Bottom line: most everyone likes it and a vote for this little war drama is a vote for the first woman (Kathryn Bigelow) to direct a best picture winner.