First-Class Plastic for Oscar Ballots

Two years ago, with great fanfare, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences staged a photo op for the news media at which executives displayed that year’s Oscar ballots before they were mailed to thousands of academy members throughout California, but when the ballots didn’t arrive, people got worried.

The accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers had stuffed the ballots in eight gray canvas mail sacks and delivered them to the back loading dock of the Beverly Hills Post Office, but days passed, and academy members began asking one another if they had received their ballots. No, they were told, no one had.

News of the missing ballots prompted an embarrassed U.S. Postal Service to launch an investigation. What they discovered was that the ballots, which all contained the proper first-class postage, had been mistaken by postal employees for third-class mail because the sacks were unlabeled. Third-class mail typically takes seven to eight days to deliver.

Academy spokesman John Pavlik says the Postal Service and the academy have taken steps to see the mishap doesn’t happen again.

“We are now putting the ballots in plastic trays that the Postal Service uses for first-class mail,” Pavlik explained. “More importantly, the Postal Service is watching the ballots from the minute they leave [our headquarters]. The chances of that kind of thing happening again are pretty remote.”

On Wednesday morning, Beverly Hills Postmaster Koula Fuller will be on hand for this year’s photo op of ballots being mailed. Also in attendance will be academy executive director Bruce Davis and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ partners Greg Garrison and Rick Rosas.

Compiled byTimes staff writers