The 98th Academy Awards will be here in just a few days, and on that night, the lives of many of the Oscar nominees will be forever changed. In the lead-up to the big award show to determine the best movie of 2025, who gave the best performances, and highlight achievements across the board, I’ve been spending way too much time reading reports from anonymous Oscar voters breaking down their ballots. One thing about this exercise has me supremely ticked off.
Multiple Oscar Voters Turned In Best Picture Ballots Without Seeing All The Movies
For those who don’t recall, the Academy made changes to its voting system last year, as reported by Variety, requiring voters to watch every nominee in a category in order to vote on it. Of the dozen or so breakdowns I’ve read, the voters have said they either watched all the nominees or at least marked a section as “abstained” if they didn’t get around to them. However, that isn’t the case for some of the ballots I’ve come across, which is bonkers.
There was one voter in a roundup conducted by The Hollywood Reporter who admitted they ranked Frankenstein as number 10 in the crowded Best Picture contest because they ran out of time and never got a chance to see it. I get wanting to “support other films,” but this totally goes against the Academy’s new rules.
Article continues belowThis pales in comparison to comments shared by an anonymous voter in a roundup by Next Best Picture, who had something to get off their chest:
I have a confession to make. I know we were supposed to watch all the movies before we voted, and I just didn’t have time. I chose not to vote in some categories where I hadn’t seen them all, but I didn’t want to skip voting in some others, like Best Picture. So I just put Bugonia at 7, The Secret Agent at 8, Sentimental Value at 9, and F1 at 10. What does Jeff Bridges say? ‘I’m trying to be righteous?’ Well, I didn’t feel very righteous doing that. I’ll try to be better next year.”
Though they skipped out on nearly half the Best Picture field, this person at least showed some level of guilt and self-awarnenss. The same can’t be said about the last anonymous ballot I found.
The Los Angeles Times published an extensive article on the matter in the leadup to the Oscars, which included one of the most insane confessions. One voter, who remains anonymous, revealed they turned off Marty Supreme 20 minutes in and planned on watching the rest of the movie on mute so they could vote in the lead actor category. Like what are we even doing here?
This Is Almost As Eggregious As Baseball Hall Of Fame Voters Turning In Blank Ballots
I know, I know, Academy voters lying on their ballots isn’t the end of the world, but it’s just super annoying and a bit egregious, especially when the rules are all laid out. In fact, it’s almost on the same level as those members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) who get on some high horse and submit blank ballots for the National Baseball Hall of Fame each year.
In January, when it announced that Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones would be enshrined in Cooperstown this summer, the BBWAA revealed that 425 ballots were received, including 11 blanks. I’ve long been in the camp of people who believe that such stunts should cause those writers to lose their voting privileges the following year. I mean, why submit a ballot at all? Surely these writers don’t have some odd bone to pick with a player who’s been retired for five years. That wouldn’t happen, right?
Am I irrationally upset about this matter? You betcha! It just sucks that some don’t want to play by the rules.
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