How the movie with the most first place votes may not win the Best Picture Oscar

It's really a convoluted system, but USA today presents a graphic to illustrate the very real possibility that the film that gets the most No. 1 votes won't win the the Oscar. Up until this year, Oscar voters received ballots with up to five choices in each field and were asked to pick one. The one with the most votes in each category was the winner.

That process will still be the rule this year, except for the best picture category. There, voters are asked to rank the films from one to 10. The counting process begins with each ballot placed in a stack according to the picture voted No. 1 on that ballot. In the extremely unlikely case that one of those 10 gains more than 50 percent of the vote (Has there ever been an election featuring 10 candidates where one of them received a majority of the total votes?), that film will be declared the winner.

What's more likely to happen is that the smallest stack will be distributed among the nine other stacks according to the movie named to the second spot on those ballots. If that doesn't produce a majority (again it's unlikely it will), the pile with the smallest stack now will be distributed among the remaining eight according to that stack's third choice.

This mean's the likely winner of this year's best picture is probably going to be the one most voters thought was the third, fourth or fifth best film of the year.

For what it's worth, here's my ranking of the 10:
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Avatar
3. Precious Based on the Novel "Push" By Sapphire
4. A Serious Man
5. An Education
6. Up in the Air
7. Up
8. District 9
9. Inglourious Basterds
10. The Blind Side