At last night’s 95th Academy Awards, the big winner was Everything Everywhere All at Once, which took home seven awards including Best Picture. Everything Everywhere’s win – and the entire Oscars broadcast – are a testament to thousands of talented artists… but they also wouldn’t be possible without ranked choice voting (RCV). 

In January, we wrote about how the Oscars use proportional ranked choice voting to choose a diverse set of nominees for their awards – reflecting the wide range of views from across the Academy. For Best Picture alone, the nominees included both Women Talking and All Quiet on the Western Front, a movie about men shooting guns. They included Avatar: The Way of Water, which pushed the limits of movie technology to create an underwater world on another planet – and The Banshees of Inisherin, a low-tech, domestic dramedy about two friends on an Irish isle. 

However, Oscars don’t just use RCV for nominations. In this post, we’ll focus on how they (just) use(d) RCV to give out their most prestigious award: the Best Picture winner.

Each year, Best Picture is the most watched category at the Oscars. It’s the subject of endless analysis and speculation, and can be a career-defining victory for the winning filmmakers and production studio. The Academy cares deeply about getting it right.

Enter ranked choice voting. RCV was introduced for Best Picture category following a scandalous 2009, when Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight failed to be nominated despite both mass critical acclaim and commercial success due to its memorable, Oscar-winning villain; thrilling plot; and top-notch special effects. 

The Academy knew it needed a new voting system to identify strong consensus winners. So they expanded the Best Picture category to 10 nominees, and implemented RCV to ensure the winning film had both deep and wide support from members. Gone were the days when a film could win just because other films “split the vote.”

The idea of the preferential ballot is to reflect the wishes of the greatest number of voters. Otherwise you might end up with a movie that, say, 25 percent of the people love and the rest can’t stand… This way, hopefully, you have a winner that most people can live with.

– Ric Robertson, chief operating officer of The Academy when it implemented RCV in 2009

RCV has lived up to its promise again and again for selecting the Best Picture that best represents what the Academy’s voters want – powerful films as different as Nomadland and The King’s Speech, or Moonlight and The Artist. This year, enter Everything Everywhere All at Once – a consensus powerhouse which swept the Oscars, winning in marquee categories like Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay in addition to Best Picture. The film has received acclaim for its groundbreaking script, diverse cast, and award-winning directing – it’s clear that many Academy members passionately support it, and nearly all members of the Academy can find something about it they like. 

Without RCV, Everything Everywhere may have missed its chance by splitting the vote with another sci-fi film like Avatar or action film like Top Gun. With RCV, it got the fair shake it deserves.

The reasons the Academy has embraced RCV – better choices and more representative winners – are the same reasons Americans all over the country have embraced it. Right now, RCV is reaching over 13 million voters in jurisdictions spanning 27 states – and that doesn’t even account for the 90+ colleges and universities, and dozens of businesses and organizations, using it in private elections too.

Whether your organization is selecting its favorite film, or your country is picking its head of state, RCV is the best way to do it. To win adoption of RCV in your community, find an RCV group in your state!