How online voting worked with the 2014 Oscar awards

Source: Google Images

The increasingly widespread use of technology for voting systems is being witnessed not only when it comes to electing officials to varying levels of government, but also under other circumstances like electing a new student council at a school or when citizens can vote on a new referendum that directly affects their everyday lives. And even long standing organizations, like the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), are moving forward with the adoption of more advanced voting technology.

Voting for the Academy Awards, better known simply as The Oscars, has traditionally been with a conventional paper ballot, but that changed to online voting for the 85^th Academy Awards in 2013. This seemed like a genuinely good idea, as members of the Academy could then vote remotely at their leisure and the ballots could be counted almost instantaneously, the online voting system faced a number of problems, particularly with older members of the Academy who were not as familiar with technology.

It is important to note that the vast majority of the voting members are of the older generation, they were “altogether unfamiliar with the platform” and had great difficulty casting their votes. This may have had a tremendous impact on the results, but this does not mean that the idea of using e-voting or online voting is a bad idea. It simply means that a better system has to be implemented in a better way, helping to educate and train the members of the Academy in how it all works.

And indeed, considering all the complaints that it received, AMPAS rolled out an “upgraded and simplified” system for voting in the 2014 Oscar Awards. Members register for their account online and do not require a separate username and password for the voting session; for the 2013 Oscars, members had separate passwords for the registration and voting process, not to mention a complicated series of checks and balances. Changing passwords could also be done online independently, whereas members had to phone into the support system last year. The Academy also worked to improve the overall user interface to make the system easier to use.

While the aftermath of the voting session has not yet been completely revealed, it appears that online voting in the 86^th annual Academy Awards went far more smoothly than the first year of online voting. With over 6,000 voting members of the Academy, the administration of the voting process for these awards is understandably simpler than if a similar system were implemented for a larger government election, but this experience should be revealing for jurisdictions and organizations that are considering the use of online voting for their own referendums and elections.

To help aid in this transition toward the greater use of technology, particularly with online and mobile voting, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still allows members to vote in person with a paper ballot, but most of the voting is online. This is in line with the growing movement toward fast-tracking younger applicants, providing a younger and more representative body of voting members than the older and more traditional demographic that has historically dominated the Academy and its ideological leanings.

By providing an online system as the primary method for voting, the Academy is helping to encourage greater voter turnout among its members. The Academy, as one voting member told David Gritten of The Telegraph, “is trying very hard to be fair and to be seen as fair.” This is not dissimilar from just about every government and organization in the world. 

How Internet Voting challenged the Oscars

Photo: Miss Karen

As we mentioned on an earlier post, this year’s Academy Awards have been used lately as a cautionary tale against the implementation of Internet voting in precinct voting. So what’s the story of this blunder, and why has it become so significant for larger elections? The damages are weightier than you might think. 

Big productions like “Les Miserables” or “Lincoln” were expected to be favored this year, as had been the case traditionally. However, 2013 unexpectedly opened the doors to independent and foreign movies such as “Beasts of the Southern Wild” and the French “Amour.” This happened not because of a sudden change of mind from the Oscar committee, but because of the new electronic platform that had been adopted for the election. It was denounced that the older members of the Academy—a vast majority—were altogether unfamiliar with the platform and therefore had great difficulty casting their ballots. The Academy moved the voting deadlines, but it failed to provide proper training to these baffled voters. The effect was a list of nominees made of votes that were initially associated to the younger voters’ thinking, and to how these young voters had been able to understand the new system.

However, it surfaced later that even the younger members had problems voting due to a terribly faulty Internet Voting platform. By then, though, it was already too late to recall the results.

At first glance, this looks like a minor mishap, even a welcome one for pop culture. After all, the public would definitely want to see a more progressive Academy instead of watching the same blockbusters win over and over again. However, no matter how positive the result seemed, the fact is that most of the Academy members had been disenfranchised. This does not mean that electronic voting shouldn’t have been implemented altogether, but that the implementation of electoral technology should have been gradual and inclusive, and the Academy failed to accomplish both aspects. Not to mention that the most important poll in the world of cinema was handled with an online voting system of substandard quality.

It goes without saying that a reliable e-voting platform is easier to use than any manual electoral method, and certainly easier than a botched online-based system, which is why blaming the failure to cast an e-ballot on old age is terribly irresponsible. The liability clearly lies on the authorities in charge of its implementation. Not only is it important to know how to choose a proper electoral technology platform, but it is also vital to instrument it gradually in order for everyone to understand it. It does not matter whether the implementation is for small elections, as was the case with the Oscars: a slow immersion with drills and active participation from the electorate defines the success or failure of an automated election. 

When it comes to elections, no matter their scale, choosing an adequate technology is key. It is the duty of the authorities in charge to make sure the electoral platform employed is actually useful, so that nobody is left behind. There are no excuses.