It’s all a bunch of piles
As an add-on to my earlier post, Bart Smith points me to an article on The Wrap about how nomination votes are tallied.
I found it very straightforward until the “surplus rule”:
In this case, “Up in the Air” and “Avatar” have significantly more votes than the 501 they need to be nominated, and more than the 601 (501 plus 20 percent) they need to trigger the surplus rule. “Up in the Air” has twice as many votes as it needs, and “Avatar” has 50 percent more.
So those two films get their nominations, but their ballots aren’t taken off the table. Instead, they’re all redistributed into the piles of the films listed second — where they count not as a full vote, but as whatever fraction of the vote wasn’t needed. A sliding scale determines exactly what percentage is used.
The “Up in the Air” ballots, for instance, will count as half a vote, because that film only needed half of each of its 1,002 votes to reach the magic number of 501. “Avatar” needed two-thirds of its 771 votes to reach the threshold, so its redistributed votes will count as one-third – i.e., the unneeded portion of each vote.
Each voter will still only get a single vote – but in this case, that single vote will be split between two different films.
It ultimately makes sense, but it very much feels like a system devised by accountants.
Articles
January 5th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Just so it’s clear: there are two rounds of voting, correct? A nomination round that reduces the eligible films to ten choices, and then a second round where a winner is determined?
January 5th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
That’s actually a pretty clever addition for this type of award – even though it wouldn’t make sense in other case. It allows there to always be a known number of ‘nominations’ (although ‘top contenders’ would be a better description).
It takes a bit of thinking before it’s clear that in the nomination phase each vote is still the same value. Basically they split the value of a nomination vote by exactly the amount to keep the film nominated. It’s fiendishly clever.
The alternative would be to just do normal preferential voting and count the last 5 contenders as the ‘nominations’. (If multiple films got knocked out simultaneously, you would give the nomination to the one with the highest vote at that point)
I’m not sure I see the reasoning for NOT doing it that way. It would seem to be simpler, so there must be a good reason not to.
Mac
(It’s definitely worth remembering Arrow’s point that no system of voting is perfect !)
January 5th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
@Earl:
Yes. Nominations create a list of ten, then voters rank those ten.
January 5th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Can’t even begin to understand it. Maybe the accountants do??
January 6th, 2010 at 3:11 am
Isn’t this a version of the Single Transferable Vote system that many think is a fair way of ensuring proportional representation should such a thing ever come to pass in our political system? I seem to remember it from my Politics ‘A’ level (UK) many, many, many (etc) years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
Successful and happy new year everyone.
January 6th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Actually sounds remarkably similar to the system of voting used to elect Senators in Australia. If it’s of any comfort no over here understands that system either.
January 20th, 2010 at 8:04 am
I’m not an accountant but I’m actually very impressed with the system. The way it’s made you can confortably go with your heart and pick the movies you really preferred without worrying to waste a vote for either a very popular or very marginal movie.