Staff accountants for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, work on the ballot mailing for the 76th Annual Academy Awards.

Each November, an election campaign commences that rivals, at least in Hollywood, the passions and sometimes the excesses of the quadrennial race for the nation’s presidency.
It’s the race for the Academy Award nomination.

Because of the Academy’s successful efforts to eliminate splashy gimmicks and gifts, the race consists principally of attempts by studios, independent distributors and publicists to make sure that each of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 6,000+ voting members sees their film.

It means special screenings for Academy members, free admission to commercial runs of a film and the mailing of DVDs.

The Academy aggressively monitors Award campaigning and has issued regulations that limit company mailings to those items that “actually assist members in their efforts to assess the artistic and technical merits of a film,” according to Academy Executive Administrator Ric Robertson. “And we seem to have had a tremendous impact in the areas we’d hoped to affect.”

Nomination ballots are mailed by the Academy in late December, and members will have two weeks to return their secret ballots to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the professional services firm formerly known as Price Waterhouse.

Secrecy is strictly maintained by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The results of nomination balloting will be revealed at a 5:30 a.m. press conference in January at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Final ballots will be mailed at the end of that month and members will have three weeks to return them. After final ballots are tabulated, only two partners of PricewaterhouseCoopers will know the results until the famous envelopes are opened onstage during the Academy Awards presentation.

Because the Academy numbers among its members the most gifted and skilled artists and craftsmen in the motion picture world, its Award stands alone as a symbol of superior achievement.

Regular awards are presented for outstanding individual or collective film achievements in up to 25 categories.

Up to five nominations will be made in most categories, with balloting for these nominations restricted to members of the Academy branch concerned; only actors, for instance, determine the nominees in the acting categories. Nominations for awards in the Foreign Language Film category are determined in a two-phase process. In phase one, a large committee composed of members from all branches select six films to move on in the competition and the Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee selects three additional titles. In phase two, a committee of 30 Academy members votes to select the five nominees from the short list of nine. Best Picture nominations and final winners in most categories are determined by vote of the entire membership.