The King and Queen would be voted in by those attending the prom, but blank nomination ballots had been circulated to home rooms almost a month earlier.

"Kinsey," a film that will probably be popular with many academy voters, could consistently land in fourth or fifth place on nomination ballots and be bumped by a rival with less support, but more No. 1 votes.

Nikki Haley led the first nomination ballot with 49% of the vote on June 8, 2010, but did not meet the 50% threshold to win the nomination outright.

In January, the Academy mails a nomination ballot and a copy of the "Reminder List" to each Academy member.

As might have been mathematically projected, every candidate got a lower percentage of the vote than they had received on the nomination ballot.

The nomination ballots went out to the nearly 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last week and are due back by Jan. 29.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences mails nomination ballots in which it qualifies 254 films released in 2003 as eligible for Oscar consideration.

On Wednesday, the party started mailing out nomination ballots.

Generally the selection is made via a nomination ballot, a top ten ballot and then a top five ballot with the group/person with the most votes winning.

To make this happen, nomination ballots will have to go out very early in January, and academy voters will have a somewhat shorter time to see any of the movies they may have missed and to cast their ballots.