Ballon d’Or Voting Is Full Of Bizarre Ballots
Ballon d’Or Voting Is Full Of Bizarre Ballots
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This is how democracy works. You give the right to vote to a large swath of people of varying ages, expertise levels, and motivations, add up their collective responses, and hope to come out with a good result. Today’s Ballon d’Or award ceremony, where Lionel Messi won the thing for the fifth time over challengers Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar, was a good example of this. Lots of votes that totaled up to a just result, even if many were cast with less-than-noble intentions
Seeing as the award is voted on by three members of every FIFA member nation—the captain and head coach of each senior national team, and a journalist from every nation—you end up with a pretty good number of screwy ballots that feature shameless homerism, thinly veiled politicking, and what can only be described as flat-out ineptitude.
Since FIFA publishes every Ballon d’Or voter’s ballot, we can enjoy first hand these often-baffling choices, and try to ascertain what the thinking behind the selections were. Here are a few notes from this year’s big ballot release, which you can find in full here
