And the Winner Is….

By Anaridis Rodriguez — 02/26/11
The votes have been casted and the winner has been chosen, but those who know will never tell. That is until tomorrow night of course. Brad Oltmanns and Rick Rosas are partners at Price Water House Coopers. They are the only two people in the world who know who are the Oscar winners.
“Rick and I completed the ballot counting on Friday. We’ve known the results since Friday afternoon. We are the only two people in the world who do, we’ll know those results until they are read on air tomorrow night,” said Oltmanns.
For over the decade, the accountants have been working with the prestigious accounting firm. In order to maintain confidentiality they work with a small team to tally the votes.
“Brad and I work together on the final tally so only him and I know who wins. The votes are counted individually by hand for every category and then we take those results, we are responsible for putting together the envelopes for the show and then we lock everything away in a secure location until we pull it out Sunday night to bring it here to the Kodak Theather,” said Rosas.
Rosas and Oltmanns tally the votes for 24 categories. But don’t get your hopes up, they are not spilling the beans.
“We don’t breathe a word to anyone and we don’t bat our eyes or anything. We keep it completely confidential. People who know us and know that we do this know we take it seriously,” Oltmanns says.
For 77 years, Price WaterHouse Copper has done the ballot counting for the Academy Awards. And aside from feeling like secret agents, Oltmanns says getting to rub elbows with the stars is exhilarating.
“It’s a unique experience, on no other day of the year do we interact with the media, and get our picture taken, it’s really exciting and pretty unique for us,” Oltmanns said.