I ran across these blog posts about how the Motion Picture Academy did their voting for the Oscars, and I thought they were interesting enough to forward along.  (By the way, thanks to Nikki Love for bringing these to my attention…)

Unlike most American elections we’re used to, the Oscars used an “instant runoff” procedure to get to the winners this year.  You can read about how one economist viewed the new system here, and read more about Oscar’s instant runoff procedure here.

(As an interesting aside, the predictions in the first post for who would win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress were ALL dead on!…)

I really enjoyed this connection with the instant runoff because back in the day (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…), I headed the presidential nomination committee for Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which used internet voting and an instant runoff to pick our nominee in 2000.  Turned out we only had two candidates, so the instant runoff never happened (also, the party convention split in half and devolved into choas – however, another story for another time…)

Take a read about the math of instant runoffs and see what you think!…