With all the hooplaand red-carpet preliminaries over, the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have made their decisions, and now it simply comes down to counting the votes.
The usual accountants have been secretly sequestered away in a hidden location to count out the final results.
Only two men that are directing the process will know who the winners are, and they will proceed with sealed envelopes, under police escort to be read publicly by the celebrities chosen.
The process begins on January 31 when over 5,800 members of the academy are mailed the ballots which are due back at Pricewaterhouse, which has handled the Academy voting for 73 years, by 5 p.m. PST on Tuesday. There is never any information divulged that tells what percentage responded, other than saying it's a substantial majority.
Beginning on Wednesday, Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas, both executives for PricewaterhouseCoopers, will be working with four other assistants on counting the votes for between 14 and 15 hours a day, over a three-day period.
Other information like who the runners-up are and how close the races are, are never told. "That's something that we keep to ourselves, take to the grave, if you will," said Oltmanns.
Another safeguard to ensure timely arrival of the envelopes for the show are that both men take separate routes in the LA traffic, in case of any problems that may arise, they each have suitcases with a copy of the results in them so that if one is delayed the other will get there.
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Tracked on: February 20, 2007 11:07 PM | Permalink to Trackback