Columnist: It's How Votes Get Counted That Counts

March 31 -- The Academy Awards are all over except for the incessant movie ads that will trumpet the results for months. But it's how the academy voted that has surprising connections to other topical issues.

The voting system used by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences often has a pronounced effect on its selections. This may appear to be a rather myopic commentary on the Oscars that only a mathematician would make, but how one keeps score helps determine who wins not only in Hollywood, but in Palm Beach, in Salt Lake, and almost everywhere there are competitions.

No one has forgotten the many types of dimpled chad and the infamous butterfly ballots that clouded the presidential election of 2000. The Electoral College always generates controversy, and strategic positioning for the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries is already being discussed by potential candidates.

Everyone is aware, too, of the vagaries of Olympic figure skating scoring, where the judging was sometimes quite subjective, to say the least. Even in those racing events such as skiing and sledding, where the scoring was objective, the times were measured in imperceptible thousandths of a second, differences that were much less than those caused by the changing weather and course conditions that the athletes confronted.

In short, much often depends on such fine discriminations and arcane measurements.

Hollywood No Different

Hollywood is no different. The winners there were chosen by a plurality system whereby the nominated movies and artists receiving the most first-place votes received the Oscars. This sounds unobjectionable until one realizes that with five nominees for each award, the winner is unlikely to be a favorite of a majority of the voting member of the academy.

The nominees, however, were chosen by a more complicated system designed to ensure variety and, some argue, quality.

Roughly it goes as follows: Each of the members of the academy ranks up to five of his or her preferences, and those nominees who receive enough first-place votes are selected. Those with the fewest first-place votes are eliminated. The votes are then redistributed among the remaining candidates. Once again those with enough first-place votes are selected and the process continues until the nominees are selected.