Grammy Awards move to online voting in hopes of increasing participation

In a move the Recording Academy hopes will increase members’ participation in the Grammy Awards, voters will soon be able to cast their ballots online for the first time.

Academy executives unveiled the elimination of paper ballots in favor of an online voting system as part of the organization’s annual review of the awards process.

The hope is that such a change will inspire a broader range of members to take part in the Grammys because it will present a more flexible voting option or appeal to artists who may be on the road during the period for voting.

“It’s been something we’ve been talking about for many years,” said Bill Freimuth, the academy’s senior vice president of awards.

The Grammys have long faced criticism for favoring traditionalism over more adventurous and diverse artists. R&B star Frank Ocean, for instance, chastised the Grammys for awarding album of the year to Taylor Swift rather than Kendrick Lamar in 2016 and accused the institution of a “cultural bias.” Criticism intensified after Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” lost the top album prize to Adele’s “25” this year

“I don’t think there was ever any opposition from members or trustees, but there were a lot of technical issues,” Freimuth said of the voting-process tweak. “We wanted to be sure our auditors at Deloitte were happy with their ability to still tabulate the ballots correctly ... Security was always a major issue, because it could become a target for hackers.”

Raising, perhaps, the specter of Moscow’s Red Army Chorus stealing the album of the year Grammy?

“We’re buttoned up as much as we possibly could be along those lines,” he said.

One other big benefit Freimuth cited was the prospect of a more accurate and representative vote tabulation. Grammy rules allow all members to cast votes in the four marquee award categories — record, album, song and new artist.

Voters also are allowed to cast ballots in up to 15 other fields, but in the past a small percentage of voters has marked more than 15, resulting in those ballots, except for the top four categories, being discarded.

The other major rule change will put songwriters alongside performers, producers, recording, mixing and mastering engineers in collecting statues for album of the year if they’ve contributed to at least 33 percent of the playing time on a winning album.