10 Shocking Problems With How The Oscar Voting Works

10. Highly Imbalanced Voting

The electing campaign for the Oscars is said to rival the passions, and excesses, of the United States' quadrennial race for presidency. Commencing in November, members are invited to special screenings of the nominated films, as well as receiving copies of their DVDs. The entire process is aggressively monitored, particularly the mailing of the nomination ballots €“ overseen by a firm who has audited for the Academy since 1936. Until the night of the ceremony, only two people in the entire membership are trusted with the sacred knowledge of the winning nominees. To secure a nomination, however, there is a significant variance in difficulty. Members from each individual branch determine the votes for the nominees within their own category. With 1,176 members, the actors branch is the largest and the costume designers is the smallest, comprising of only 108 members. Christopher Goodwin summarises this major flaw: 'Only 18 votes are needed for a film to win a costume design Oscar nomination. It takes only 39 votes to win a Film Editing nomination, and so on... Because of the preferential voting system for Best Picture nominations, although 6,208 are eligible to vote, a film can secure one of the Best Picture nomination slots with only 301 votes.' There seems to be no regulation in place to avoid the apparent devaluation of certain awards. Despite the common myths of individual Oscars holding more prestige than others, any Oscar is an equally monumental achievement. Such myths exist only as a result of the Academy's seemingly preferential methodology.