2016 Olympics Voting Process - Go Chicago!

Tomorrow is The Day! We will find out if my hometown of Chicago gets the 2016 Summer Games.

The candidates are Chicago, Rio, Madrid, and Tokyo.

Each country will get a final hour tomorrow (45 minute presentation, followed by 15 minutes of question/answer). Then, the voting starts.

The voting process is interesting. There are up to 5 rounds of voting. After each round, if one country does not receive a majority of the votes, then the team with the lowest number of votes is eliminated.

At that point, IOC (International Olympic Committee) members from that country can join in the voting. Also, members who voted for the eliminated country have to vote for their next choice (which is why cities still lobby members who are known to favor a different country - they want to be the member's second choice).

This makes things unpredictable. Many times in the past, the country that received more votes in the early rounds ends up not winning in the final round.