Oscar best picture changed from single vote to full preferential ranking

When reading about voting systems, I'm always reminded of Arrow's impossibility theorem, which everybody should be aware of:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem</a><p>In short, no "fair" voting system can satisfy these three criteria:<p>- If every voter prefers X over Y, then the group prefers X over Y.<p>- If every voter prefers X over Y, then adding Z to the slate won't change the group's preference of X over Y.<p>- There is no dictator.

Looks like they're using instant runoff voting: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_runoff_voting" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_runoff_voting</a>

The important question is: how likely is this to change the results? In recent decades there's been a trend for the Best Picture Oscar to wind up going to films which may not be all that good but which are seen as "Oscar-worthy" due to weighty subject matter or otherwise "seeming smart". Historical dramas have made up something like twenty out of the last thirty years' winners, including such so-so films as Braveheart. No comedy has won since Shakespeare in Love (which was acceptably smart-seeming because it had Shakespeare in it) and before that it was Annie Hall (which, incidentally, beat Star Wars).<p>I wonder if preferential ranking will improve the quality of winners by better reflecting the true preferences of the voters rather than the preferences the voters seem to think they ought to have.

I wonder how long this will last. "Fair" voting approaches such as preferential ranking attempt to address the challenge of producing an outcome that is agreeable to everyone, which is subtly different than recognizing the "best". This will favor a compromise result over one that is challenging, thought-provoking, or "artistic" in other meaningful ways.

I've been convinced that range voting it the best -- better than IRV and approval voting. It's intuitive also. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting</a>

I always wondered what HN would look like if we used preferential ranking, and almost started to work on something earlier this month.