The process is a maze of committees and panels and juries. A great season can mean nothing unless you choose sample episodes wisely. And most winners probably don't even realize that 95 percent of the eligible voters didn't even cast ballots in their category.
Warning: the Emmys voting system, which officially kicked off this week with the posting of eligible entries on the official website, makes the Motion Picture Academy's preferential system of vote-counting seem like child's play.
"It's a very complex and weird landscape here," admits John Leverence, the senior vice president of awards at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.