Choice voting at the Oscars; Nate Silver explains IRV for Best Picture
America's most successful awards show -- and often the most-watched television program in the world-- is the Academy of Motion Pictures' annual Oscar awards. For more than a half century, nominations have been selected with the choice voting method of proportional voting that FairVote recommends for legislative elections. Starting last year, instant runoff voting is used to select Best Picture from among ten nominees.
FairVote has set up OscarVotes123.com to explain the Oscar voting process and highlight news and analysis, including commentary from board chair Krist Novoselic. On January 24th, celebrated blogger Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com fame provided an excellent analysis of how instant runoff voting might work in this year's final vote for Best Picture. Instant runoff voting (also called ranked choice voting and the Alternative Vote) was used last weekend at the Producers Guild of America awards and has been adopted for a growing number of American elections, including Oakland and San Francisco in California and the largest cities in Minnesota, Tennessee and Maine.