The Final Ballot

There's been a bit of talk about obvious winners and the role of the final ballot in pageants, so I thought I'd dig up an old post. First, after all phases of competition are over the five highest scoring women are randomly listed for the judges. Each judge then ranks them from winner to 4th runner-up. It is my understanding that the woman who has made the best overall impression and proven herself most capable of doing the job of Miss So-and-So should be ranked first, and so on down to fifth. The judges don't know how the women scored, so theoretically the woman who was fifth before the final ballot could win and the woman with the highest competition score could end up 3rd or 4th runner-up!

Based on the use of the final ballot, I find it particularly annoying to think that anyone "has it in the bag." To prove that point I dug up an entry from a couple years ago in which I used some of my favorite TV characters to illustrate how a final ballot can work:

Judge #1######### Judge #2 ##### Judge #3
1. Samantha ##### 1. Ms. Big #### 1. Ms. Big

2. Charlotte ##### 2. Carrie ###### 2. Miranda

3. Carrie ####### 3. Charlotte # ## 3. Carrie

4. Miranda ##### 4. Miranda ##### 4. Charlotte

5. Ms. Big ###### 5. Samantha ### 5. Samantha

Judge #4 ##### Judge #5 ###### Judge #6
1. Carrie ##### 1. Charlotte ### 1. Samantha

2. Ms. Big #### 2. Carrie ###### 2. Carrie

3. Charlotte ## 3. Samantha ### 3. Charlotte

4. Samantha ## 4. Miranda #### 4. Miranda

5. Miranda #### 5. Ms. Big #### 5. Ms. Big

After the judges rank the women on the final ballot, the auditor's tabulate the result using this key: 1 = 10 points, 2 = 5 points, 3 = 3 points, 4 = 2 points and 5= 1 point.

The ladies would score as follows:

Carrie: 31
Ms. Big: 28
Samantha: 27
Charlotte: 26
Miranda: 14

So, Carrie takes the crown (she is the star of the show) even though only one judged deemed her the winner. Judges either loved or hated Samantha and Ms. Big, while Carrie stayed in the middle and garnered the most points. Note, Samantha and Ms. Big were both first by two judges and Ms. Big was last three times to Samantha's two; yet, Ms. Big placed higher than Samantha because Judge #4 placed her second. Poor Miranda was only “last” according to one judge, but ended in 4th place anyway.

You see, when you are perplexed by pageant results, it’s the Top 5 balloting system that you should fight to eliminate, rather than accosting the winner, judges or auditors. Unless of course you don't think the woman had any business being in the Top 5...!

I think maybe I am “okay” with all of this thanks to my Forensics (competitive speech) experience. Sometimes the judges would know what they were doing, other times they were faculty from the Communications or Theatre department who merely owed a favor to the Director of Forensics who was hosting the tournament. In Forensics, you’re divided into groups of 4 to 7 competitors and you do your event 2 or 3 times, for a different judge each time, usually with a different mix of competitors. You’re given both a score and ranked against the others in your group. In the end, the top 6 compete in a final round. Our coach always stressed that you had to be the best in each round. Forensics speak goes like this: “You have to get the one. If you go one, one, six, someone with straight threes WILL beat you.”