Looks like some changes are happening for the Academy Awards, as The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have just made rule changes to the voting process for their Best Animated Feature film category.

We don’t know if the change was prompted by the drama following the 89th Academy Awards earlier this year where popular anime film Kimi No Wa / Your Name got glossed over. But Variety says that the change was made to compensate for low voter turnout for the category.

With the new change, eligible Academy voter willing to opt into a nominating committee will be able to vote in the category, instead of having voting restricted to just a single branch. As for the category, it will also now have a preferential ballot to decide nominations where choices will be ranked up as opposed to the numerical system that was previously used.

This ultimately makes voting for Best Animated Feature more similar to the system used for Best Picture category, and hopefully, it does help with nominations.