On Thursday (April 15), the motion picture academy turned on the website that allows its 9,362 members to cast their votes for the Oscars online. This marks the second year that balloting will only be done electronically. Until 2019, the academy had been willing to send paper ballots when requested by members.
The ballot covers all 23 competitive categories at the Academy Awards. Members are asked to rank the eight nominees for Best Picture and choose one nominee in each of the other 22 races (all of these now have five contenders as Makeup & Hairstyling finally expanded from three last year). While the Best Picture winner is chosen by a complicated counting method, the others are determined by a simple popular vote.
Eligible voters have until 5 p.m. PT on Tuesday, April 20 to complete the process. The accountants will then tally the results and the winners will be revealed on the 93rd annual Oscars, which take place on April 25.
That is 42 days from the announcement of the nominations on March 15. The academy had been moving towards shorter seasons but Covid caused it to back-track. In 2020, there were only 27 days from the announcement of the nominations on January 13 to the ceremony on February 9. In 2019, the two dates were 33 days apart while in 2018 it was 40. In 2017, there were 35 days in between while there was a whopping gap of 45 days in 2016.
Likewise in 2020, final voting kicked off just 17 days after the nominations were announced and ran for only six days. Those are the shortest time frames in Oscar history. In 2019 and in 2017, there were 22 days between the big reveal of nominations and the start of the eight-day voting period. In 2018, the break till final voting began was 28 days and it too ran eight days. And in 2016, the period before final voting started was 29 days and balloting lasted for 12 days.
2020 Oscars: Who are the 9,362 voting members who decide the Academy Awards?
As nominations voting kicks off on March 5, we wondered who decides the 2021 Oscars. There are 9,362 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who are eligible to vote for both the nominees and winners of the 93rd Academy Awards.
In 2020, the motion picture academy achieved its five-year goal of doubling the number of women among its membership. In all, 819 film professionals were invited to become part of the organization that hands out the Oscars. Compare this intake to those of each of the the previous six years: 842 in 2019; a record 928 in 2018; 774 in 2017; 683 in 2016; 322 in 2015; and 271 in 2014.
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