Question/Suggestion for Tony voters

Oftentimes, many Tony award categories are hotly contested. It seems this year is no exception. Do Tony voters just make one selection, or do they provide a top 2 or 3 selection? By providing a Top 2 or 3 list seems to be more fair than just making one selection. It reduces the risk of "fan voting" in my opinion and the quality of selection would prevail given all of the voters would be ranking the nominees.

Updated On: 6/9/17 at 10:24 AM

Didn't the Oscars recently adopt something similar? Isn't that how Moonlight won Best Picture?

Tony voters make one selection on a paper ballot. Leave it to the theater to do things the old fashioned way.

froote said: "Yes the Oscar for Best Picture (but not the other categories) is voted for on a preferential ballot. Although we'll never know if Moonlight would have won without it, it's generally thought that the La La Land backlash that came around the time of Oscar voting led to those that didn't love it placing it near the bottom of their lists, and Moonlight getting a good number of 1, 2 and 3 rankings to lead it to Best Picture. It has been around for a few years now and I like the way it works, the winners usually turn out to be more to my taste than they used to be.



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The problem with the preferential ballot, though, is that you end up with the general consensus "we can stand this nominee even if it's not our 100% favorite" rather than the actual favorite winning. Taking the Oscars again as an example, regardless of personal opinions about the films, it seems pretty clear based on how the awards played out that more voters liked La La Land the best over Moonlight, and the same was true last year with The Revenant and even Mad Max likely getting more top votes than Spotlight. But neither won because so many people also hated those films. So by letting people pick 2 or 3 shows on the ballot at the Tonys, it seems like that would result in not the show the majority of the voters liked the best winning, but rather the show they could sort of agree on that they could tolerate winning.

Perhaps tolerate wasn't the best word--voters clearly liked Moonlight and Spotlight, but while we'll never know, it still feels to me like the bulk of them preferred something else but sort of settled on those as their #2 or #3 choice (and you're right about the technical awards, but Best Director would almost always match Best Picture prior to the preferential ballot, whereas in 3 of the past 4 years now it suddenly hasn't--that to me at least is a big indicator of the effect it's had).

And not to get too off topic here, but the main problem I have with the preferential ballot at the Oscars at least is that they only use it for one category--it's like "We have 23 categories we're going to vote on one way, and then all of a sudden for the biggest award of the night, we're going to vote completely differently!"

Updated On: 6/10/17 at 11:04 AM

I see your point about best meaning the one the most people can agree on, but I guess I still just prefer the "pick your favorite and move on" method rather than essentially picking a few favorites to put support behind. I feel if 50 people think one thing is the best and 45 think another is, the one with 50 votes should win, even if those 50 also think the other thing is second best.

As far as Director is concerned, yes, the more flashy film has won recently, but when you look at some of the other times Picture and Director have matched in the past 20 years or so before the preferential ballot, you had things like "The Artist" still winning director over "Hugo" or "A Beautiful Mind" over "Lord of the Rings". Not to say those directors weren't deserving at all, and for the record, I 100% agree Spotlight was better than The Revenant and frankly thought both La La Land and Moonlight were about even, but it just seems to me the preferential ballot has really changed what's winning and I'm not sure that it completely reflects what the bulk of the Academy thinks is the "best".

And you're right about preferential definitely not working in categories with less nominees, which is why it would never work at the Tonys or other Oscar categories, but it still just seems strange to me that you suddenly vote completely differently for the biggest award of the night.

Yeah people will have different thoughts on it and I respect your opinion. I actually listened to an awards podcast a few months ago and they had a very heated debate about whether the preferential. ballot was a good thing. I have to admit, as I said in my first post, a big part of me liking it is that the winners have turned out to my taste. I preferred Birdman to Boyhood, Spotlight to The Revenant and The Big Short and Moonlight is potentially my favorite film of all time. So you can imagine that I would find it difficult to want to go back when I struggle to find winners I really loved beforehand.

OK, I'll say it: The preferential ballot sucks, and it has made a mockery of Oscar history. There was a time when the Best Film and Best Director won hand-in-hand. Often, but not always, the movie with the most nominations won Best Picture; it was a sign of the film's popularity. There was a time when it meant something to have the most Oscar nominations. Like ''All About Eve'' and ''Titanic,'' ''La La Land'' scored 14 nominations; unlike them, now ''La La Land'' is the only 14-time nominee to lose Best Picture.

Now anything can happen. The preferential ballot allows the voters to manipulate the vote in how they rank the movies. I believe Best Picture is the only category where they allow that. It should be based on getting the most votes, not so-called ''consensus.'' So ''La La Land'' won the BAFTA, N.Y. Film Critics, Broadcast Critics, the PGA, the DGA and swept the Golden Globes, but got upset by ''Moonlight,'' and, to add insult to injury, the Best Picture presentation was a disaster. ... ''The Revenant'' won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the DGA, and yet it lost to ''Spotlight'' for Best Picture; ''Spotlight'' won only 2 Oscars, a low that the Academy hasn't seen since ''The Greatest Show on Earth'' in 1953.

What also made this year's Oscars even uglier was the politics. Some people urged Academy voters to pick ''Moonlight,'' a movie about a young, gay black boy, as Best Picture, as a protest vote against Trump's win at the election. They also accused ''La La Land'' of being racist because it was about a white guy who loves jazz and didn't have any black people in the movie (wrong!). That was appalling.

Updated On: 6/10/17 at 12:57 PM

Sounds like the ranked choice voting we have in San Francisco. When you vote, say, for a Supervisior position, you pick your top three candidates as 1, 2, and 3. If there is no clear majority winner, the ranked choices are tallied. This avoids the time and expense of run-off elections.