Voting From the Heart (Once the Online Snags Were Solved) Oscar voting has been live online for a week, and almost from the first, there were problems. At Deadline, Mike Fleming Jr. reports that there was an outage for several hours on the Academy's site on Tuesday. A note from the support center sent out in the aftermath read: I am sorry to hear that you encountered problems when logging in to vote. While there were a few minor issues that caused problems for a small group of members, those are now cleared up so you are free to log in and vote. I apologize that it occurred to you but rest assured that it wasn't system wide and everything has been cleared up. We hope that you are still looking forward to voting electronically this year and encourage you to do so at your convenience. Other members reported that the Academy's tech guys were helpful and persistent in dealing with online snags. But there is still confusion about this year's procedures. The filmmaker Barry Levinson prefers the old-school style of ballots - "I just like the idea that you just put a little mark and you mail it," he said on Wednesday, at an event celebrating "Silver Linings Playbook" - and planned to vote that way. Had he requested his ballot? the Bagger asked him. "I don't know if I have to request it or not," he said. You do, the Bagger told him - and the deadline was last week. "I'm sure that somebody took care of it," Mr. Levinson said, with the assurance of the personal assistant-employing class. And he was right: the Academy mailed paper ballots to members who had not registered online. The actor and devoted Academy member Bob Balaban, meanwhile, was enthusiastic about the electronic option. "The great thing about voting online - one year I spent so much time planning what I was voting for that I missed the cutoff," he said at the "Silver Linings Playbook" party, held at Le Cirque. I almost wanted to get on a plane and deliver it myself. I didn't care that much, but I did care. Mr. Balaban, who appeared in an Oscar contender this year, "Moonrise Kingdom," is diligent about his choices, and he is excited about this season's. "Some years, I have to struggle to nominate five best supporting something or others, and this year there's no struggle," he said. There's a really good mix to me this year of movies that are big studio movies, tiny little independent movies, and it's really got diversity, which I don't think it's had forever. It's a real race! "It forces people, in a way, to actually go see movies," he continued. You know, a lot of voting is done by voters who never saw any of the movies, and they're voting for their friends or their cousins. This year, there's so much talk about the movies, and everybody really wants to see them all. We're going to have people voting from their hearts, as opposed to whatever else they vote from. It's a good thing for the movies.