Technology continues to control our lives and influence our motivations every day! Soon, the ease of electronic voting will permeate into the routine and methods of the Academy Awards, presenting academy members the ease of voting with an “electronic voting system”, reports Entertainment Weekly. Starting with next year’s season, the 85th Academy Awards in 2013, the Academy will start going digital. Prior to this movie, the ballots were mailed out, mailed back, and counted by hand by an accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Current, the Academy is developing a new software voting system with the firm Everyone Counts in time for next year’s Oscars. They will, in the meantime, “undertake a rigorous security and used-acceptance testing process”. They will be ensuring that the system will not be able to be hacked by outside users. However, this does not mean that PricewaterhouseCoopers is completely gone, as they will be responsible for the final tabulation and verification of the results. This e-voting will determine the nominees as well as the winners.
With the Oscars entering the realm of digital voting, speeding up the process, one wonders how this will affect other awards ceremonies as well as political races. What do you think? How will this influence the voters and what do you think the hazards are using electronic voting? And, being the tech/aesthetic geek I am, do you think the user layout will be pretty?
