Adam’s Oscar ballot [click to enlarge]

So my prediction is that Avatar will win Best Picture because it will get more second- and third-place votes than The Hurt Locker or other contenders. Under the new voting system for Best Picture, instead of voters just picking their favorite, and the one with the most votes winning, voters must rank the films, and then assuming no film gets 50% of the first-place votes the film with the lowest number of first-place votes drops out and its votes are allocated to the second choice of those voters, and that is repeated until one film winds up with 50% or more. This process or something similar should be adopted to our political system. This would allow people to vote for a third-party candidate without “throwing away” their votes. If third-party votes prevented any candidate from getting 50% of the votes, then the second choices of the third-party voters would come into play. Over time, a third-party or parties could become politically viable, so the 99% of all elected officials in the United States who come from the Democrats or Republicans would stand to gain little from such a process being adopted. But I can hope.