And the award for best voting system goes to…

Anyone up very late last night, hoovering away at the toffee popcorn might have caught a wee victory for voting reform.

Late last night saw The Hurt Locker walk away with the Best Picture Oscar, after Academy Voters broke with First-Past-the-Post and backed preferential voting.

We reported on this back in September. Then Academy’s president Tom Sherak said that preferential voting was essential to choose the best picture candidate “with the strongest support of a majority of our electorate.” And we couldn’t have put it better – although not just for film, but with the MPs we all have to live with.

The Hurt Locker beat off a glitzy big budget campaign from 3D Blockbuster Avatar, and was widely rated by critics as the stronger picture. Don’t want to offend any Avatards, but Rotten Tomatoes says as much. We checked.

A decent Best Picture needs a decent voting system. The Academy ditched First-Past-the-Post – a system that could have handed Best Picture Oscar to a movie on barely a tenth of the vote, and backed the Alternative Vote. They wanted a serious movie with a serious mandate. And our oh so easily star struck politicians might want to remember that.

With a General Election campaign in the offing, the main parties may have glitz and massive budgets, but voters are prepared to reward substance. Well, that’s if they’ve got a voting system that gives actually let’s them.

PS: The Daily Telegraph got the wrong end of the stick about this last week.

They claimed that “Hollywood has become embroiled in a row ahead of the Oscars over a new 'transferable vote' system which critics claim could mean the award for best picture could go to a film with just 11 per cent of the vote”.

Sorry guys, that’s the ridiculous system we use to elect our MPs. And the system the Oscar’s were wise to get rid of.