And the Oscar Goes to … Voting Reform?

This article originally appeared in New America Weekly on Feb. 21, 2019.

For the first time in a while, voting reform seems possible. Ranked-choice voting (RCV), a system that allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference rather than voting for only one, is spreading across the United States; it's been adopted by the state of Maine and more than 20 U.S. cities—including, notably, New York City. While RCV has yet to fully permeate the national consciousness, its star is on the rise.

Meanwhile, the Academy Awards, the most star-studded event of the year, is on the wane. Aside from failing to find—and keep—a host for the 2019 telecast, the Oscars have been struggling for years against the forces of streaming and digital technology, growing demands for equal and fair representation, and, thanks in large part to both, increasingly bad ratings.

What do RCV and the Oscars have in common? The Oscars have used RCV since 2009—though you’d be forgiven for not knowing, since it’s not talked about much in this context. And that’s a shame: While the evidence is inconclusive, there are signs that RCV has, in important ways, brought the ceremony in line with demands for more representative, inclusive art.

In the late aughts, the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences (AMPAS), which hosts the Oscars, saw it’s premiere property in a state of crisis. Rating were plummeting; the show was becoming more insular. The two were related, the AMPAS leadership determined, but it wasn’t until 2009, when The Dark Knight failed to land a Best Picture nod, that the show’s organizers realized that dramatic change was necessary to save the event from slipping into irrelevance.

Enter RCV.

Among the many reasons to dispense with FPTP is that, under this system, votes are split among the most mainstream, popular contenders, enabling a film like Crash or a candidate like Donald Trump—loathed by many but still able to capture a passionate minority base—to secure victory. In a five-entry Best Picture race, a winner can emerge with just over 20 percent; consider how this proportion decreases as the field becomes more crowded.

In other words, to boost the Oscars’ ratings and relevance, FPTP was out and RCV was in. Or rather, it was back in. For those who remember the Oscars before 1943—Olivia de Havilland!—the change was in fact a return to the old method for selecting Best Picture. RCV was resurrected to do for the Best Picture race what is has done for elections: free voters to make sincere rather than strategic choices, and, crucially for the Oscars, produce popular, majority-backed winners.

Of course, RCV’s role in the Oscars has also had its critics, though that’s as much a quirk of execution by the Academy than a problem with RCV itself. While its advantages in political campaigns are well documented, its impact on the Oscars is inconclusive—partly because the AMPAS doesn’t disclose campaign finance expenditures or vote tabulations, so it’s hard to know how RCV has altered campaign behavior, or at what round of vote counting a majority was reached. Many culture writers have derided the system, arguing that it produces “bland” winners. The logic is as follows: Voters’ first choices are usually the bold films that inspire passion, while the more middle-of-the-road choices land in second or third place on many ballots. Because it’s difficult to find a majority of voters who share the same passion for a nominee, no winner emerges after the first round. Then, one of the lower-ranked choices earns enough reallocated votes in successive rounds to push it over 50 percent.

This kind of agreeable, consensus result, critics argue, doesn’t fit with the boundary-pushing spirit of the arts, and makes for boring television. These same critics also note how, even since RCV’s Oscars comeback, ratings for the telecast have continued trending downward (which, to be fair, is true for television across the board).

Still, that doesn’t mean that RCV is necessarily bad for the Oscars. Indeed, since the change, there have been two instances when the award for Best Picture went to a different film at the Oscars than at the series of awards shows that preceded the ceremony, many of which still use FPTP: Spotlight in 2016, and then Moonlight in 2017, which beat out The Big Short and La La Land, respectively. Both films are entertaining, bold, thought-provoking, and culturally relevant choices whose surprise victories demonstrated RCV’s capacity to reward both broad likability and cinematic excellence.

In addition, RCV has survived multiple rule changes and cultural shifts since it was re-introduced at the Oscars almost a decade ago, including the expansion and contraction of the number of possible Best Picture nominees, the deliberate diversification of the Academy’s voting membership, and the introduction—and cancellation—of the “popularity Oscar.” That RCV has weathered these changes indicates that there’s value, that it’s doing something right.

And yet, despite the potential of RCV at the Oscars, the bad press around it has persisted. So how to encourage a broader embrace of the system?

The Oscars podium, over the years, has become a powerful political stump—and it may be one way to bring more attention to RCV at the ceremony and beyond.

Like all reform issues that deal with mechanics and procedure, RCV is on the practical end of the spectrum. Put more bluntly, it’s hard for non-wonks to get excited about it—in a 2014 piece, the New York Times’ Melena Ryzik described RCV as “unglamorous.” But while RCV may seem anathema to an event that prizes pageantry, the current pro-reform zeitgeist, as well as Frances McDormand’s stirring speech in 2018, may leave some room to maneuver forward.

As a reminder, this is how McDormand closed her Best Actress acceptance speech at the 2018 Oscars: “I have two words to leave you with tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider.” An inclusion rider, as people quickly found out, is an equity clause for film and television contracts that guarantees a minimum percentage of women and people of color on set. The concept was so little known, even among Hollywood insiders, largely because employers wanted it that way, arguing that diversity provisions slow production. But director Anthony Hemingway dismissed that claim. Sure, it may make things slightly more complicated in the short term, but in time it ends up paying dividends—a sentiment frequently expressed by RCV advocates.

On the heels of #OscarsSoWhite and in the midst of #MeToo, McDormand’s speech did more than set off a mass Google and Twitter search frenzy. Some of Hollywood’s biggest names came forward and declared their support for the contract addendum; one of the most prominent talent agencies in the world, William Morris Endeavor, swiftly made it its new company standard, a move that University of Southern California professor Stacy L. Smith, the rider’s architect, called “a game changer.” And later, in September 2018, Warner Bros became the first major Hollywood studio to adopt it as part of a new company-wide diversity policy.

Or think of it like this: McDormand took a risk by ending her speech not with a gauzy call for more diversity in the industry, but with a very technical, actionable, and “unglamorous” strategy to help correct the problem. Her risk paid off, which is what makes this case instructive.

It’s hardly a leap to argue that the same may also work for RCV—especially since there’s already a precedent of celebrities using their status to promote RCV and its attendant values on a broader scale. In 2011, Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, who starred in that year’s Best Picture winner The King’s Speech, threw their weight behind a referendum to replace FPTP with RCV in the United Kingdom. Firth called the referendum “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change our clapped-out politics for good.” And in spring of 2018, Jennifer Lawrence campaigned for RCV in Maine as the state prepared to vote on whether to implement the system statewide (having already approved it once by ballot referendum in 2016). The measure was approved.

To make the jump from state and national campaigns to the awards stage, RCV needs the kind of vociferous support that can transport the issue from wonk-land to the national conversation. It needs, in short, the same treatment that McDormand gave to inclusion rider at the podium—an expansive view that holds our art to the same standards of inclusion as our politics.

Yes, all voting systems have trade-offs, and it’s possible that RCV may have less of a positive impact on the Oscars than it does on political campaigns. But, for now, this is certain: RCV is known to generate, on top of so much else, fairer and more representative competition. AMPAS organizers and honorees alike ought to more explicitly acknowledge this system. After all, why not embrace something that, while seemingly unglamorous, stands to make a meaningful difference? Isn’t that the exact sort of forward-thinking vision that the arts cherish?