Hey, Oscars Voters: Your Third, Fourth and Fifth Choices for Best Picture Probably Won’t Matter

As the 7,902 Oscars voters fill out their ballots this week, they will have five slots in which to rank their choices for Best Picture. But as we’ve discussed many times before, their votes don’t count toward all five of their picks — instead, the preferential system of vote-counting used for Oscar nominations directs a single vote on each ballot to the highest-ranked film that needs the vote.

Academy members, many of whom understandably don’t understand the intricacies of the balloting, have often wondered how useful their second, third, fourth and fifth choices really are. If the ballots are counted starting with each voter’s No.