In a break from the glitz, glamor, and big names of election season, ranked choice voting (RCV) is back in the public eye this week – as it will be used for most Academy Award nominations tomorrow morning, January 24 (and again to select the Best Picture winner on March 12). It’s a reminder that while it’s still growing in use in American public elections, RCV is everywhere (all at once) – in Robert’s Rules of Order, commonly used in elections for various well-known associations, and long-used in public elections in countries like Australia and Ireland. 

So, here are a few quick things to know about RCV and our friend Oscar:

The gold standard

Because there are multiple nominees in every category – 10 for Best Picture, and 5 for other categories like Best Actor and Actress – the Oscars use the multi-winner, proportional form of RCV for nominations. This “gold standard” form of RCV is the basis of the Fair Representation Act (there’s that glitz and glamor again), and used in public elections in cities like Cambridge, MA and Albany, CA. It was adopted by the voters of Portland, OR in 2022, and will be used there beginning in 2024. 

Why is multi-winner, proportional RCV the gold standard? It ensures that winners (or in this case, nominees) are chosen in proportion to the share of votes cast, and that nearly all voters will help elect a candidate (nominee) that they support. In other words, “PRCV” is how to make a representative body truly, well… representative. 

Look at the diversity of recent Oscar nominees compared to other awards shows (we’ll get to that later). Among last year’s Best Picture nominees alone, it’s hard to see the same voters nominating both the broad Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up and the three-hour Japanese arthouse film Drive My Car. Same with the box-office hit King Richard about the Williams Sisters and the sweeping, subtle western Power of the Dog. 

But that’s exactly the point. The nominees represent voters who like comedies, voters who like uplifting sports movies with powerful performances, and voters who like subtle, slow-burn art films – not just whatever group happens to be in the majority, to the exclusion of sizable minorities that should have their voices heard. (Remember this if both Tár and Top Gun: Maverick are nominated for Best Picture tomorrow!) 

Together with reforms to the Academy after the #OscarsSoWhite scandal in the mid-2010s – like doubling the number of the Academy’s female members and tripling the number of the Academy’s members of color – PRCV also supports greater racial, ethnic, and gender diversity among nominees. 

This includes 2022 Best Actor winner Will Smith and Best Supporting Actress winner Ariana DuBose, and Best Director winners Jane Campion (2022) and Chloe Zhao (2021). They are just the second and third women to win the award.

Better than alternatives

Schitt’s Creek, Ted Lasso, The Crown, Dopesick, Succession, and The White Lotus are all loved shows (with most focusing on older, whiter, and wealthier characters) – but are they loved enough to basically sweep recent Emmy nominations? In 2022, 13 of 14 Emmy Supporting Actor/Actress nominations went to Dopesick or The White Lotus. A remarkable 14 actors from Succession were nominated. In 2021, only seven actors from Ted Lasso were nominated. 

Why? Starting until 2016 (until they announced they were dropping the system just last month), the Emmys invited members to “vote for all entries in this category that you have seen and feel are worthy of a nomination.” In the election reform world, this is known as “approval voting.” While approval voting has benefits over single-choice voting, it is not proportional and runs into problems in a multi-winner (or multi-nominee) system like this one.

Think about it. Let’s say 51% of Television Academy voters like Succession, whereas 49% prefer a range of other shows. That same 51% can go through the entries, checking the box for every Succession actor – and successfully nominating each one. That 49% gets nothing. Approval voting also gives “more support to ‘safe’ choices that have more name recognition,” as our President and CEO Rob Richie notes. 

While Hollywood awards shows may not be quite as big a deal as our democracy, this type of approval voting method – where the same majority gets to have its voice heard twice or three or four times, before sizable minorities have their voice heard even once – can have dramatic (and negative) impacts in public elections. One party, or community, or racial group could be totally shut out – left without a seat at the table.

Hollywood leads the way

Keep an eye out… when the Academy adopted the single-winner form of ranked choice voting to select Best Picture winners in 2009, just four American cities used that better election system. But Hollywood is a trend-setter, and RCV started to grow in the years after the Oscars adopted it. And it did so like some of the best thrillers – slow (up to about 10 cities by 2016), and then very fast (now in 63 cities, counties, and states!). 

Will history repeat itself, with Tinseltown also leading the way on the adoption of the “gold standard” of multi-winner ranked choice voting? Since 2019, PRCV has been adopted in four more cities, including Portland this past November. Portland is the largest city in Oregon, and will become the largest U.S. city to use PRCV when it’s implemented in 2024. 

We’re looking forward to the nominations tomorrow, and we’ll be back for a Part 2 on RCV at the Oscars – how the single-winner form will be used to pick the Best Picture winner in March.