How the Bagger Is Voting (Down to the Animated Shorts) LOS ANGELES - Can we begin with a caveat? This year's ever-shifting race, with its wealth of good movies, has some really tight contests, like best original screenplay. Though Mark Boal ("Zero Dark Thirty") won the Writers Guild Award in the same category, the consensus here seems to have shifted since we wrote about the race this week and now favors Quentin Tarantino, for "Django Unchained," with a passionate faction going for Michael Haneke and "Amour." So mark that one on your ballot at your own risk. And changes to the voting rules have made some of the usual hard-to-predict groups, like animated short, even tougher. Opening up those categories to the entire Academy membership is a big step up in recognition. But it's also an experiment, an executive in the Academy's animation branch acknowledged, and there's no way to know how many non-animators took up the offer to choose their favorite. Not that there's ever any way of knowing who voted for what; the Academy, frustratingly, does not release those figures. We've made our picks based on months of reporting, way-too-detailed conversations with industry players and a few educated guesses. Take a look at our ballot here. Best of luck to us all.