The Oscars Voting Process
The 92nd Academy Awards are fast approaching, in fact at the time of this being written they will be taking taking place in just a few days. There are plenty of people out there that don’t understand exactly how the voting process works. First of all, the biggest thing that people should know is that it is called The Academy Awards for a reason. The Academy is the group that votes on movies, directors, musicians, etc. This doesn’t mean, however, that one group of people determines all of the winners.
Winners of the awards are decided upon by their peers in the same fields. For example, Best Directing is decided by directors and film editors are nominated by film editors, etc. However, the award for Best Picture is voted on by all members of The Academy. Other certain categories such as International Feature Film and Animated Feature Film have special voting rules. Voting for these films is done when the Academy president chooses a head for the voting committee and that head sends invitations to other members of the Academy to vote for the best films.
Nominations voting is conducted using both paper and online ballots, with online voting being the preferred choice for the overwhelming majority of Academy members. Voting begins for all Academy members at the end of December and all votes are tallied by PricewaterhouseCoopers. For the final balloting process, all voting is conducted online, and all categories become available on the ballot for voting members. In the end, only two members of PricewaterhouseCoopers know the results of the ballots until the envelopes are opened on stage. The results of which we will get to see on Sunday Febraury 9 @ 8pm EST.