If you follow the annual Baseball Hall of Fame inductions even a little bit, you are probably aware of the public Vote Tracker, started in 2013 by Ryan Thibodaux. The tracker collects all ballots that are shared publicly (or anonymously sent) and records them in a spreadsheet that anyone can access. The Vote Tracker has not only been invaluable in predicting who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but has elevated the discourse among the fans who really care about who gets honored in Cooperstown.

That leads us to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an institution that could benefit from more transparency in its process. Each year, Rock Hall voters are faced with a ballot that is stacked top-to-bottom with worthy artists, but are required to select no more than five names. Voters assume that their peers will likely be supporting superstar Artist X, so instead throw a choice to niche-genre Artist Y, who theoretically needs the support more. The Fan Vote results can become the only data point a voter has to reference, which is not a fair representation of voter sentiment or Hall of Fame worthiness. It turns the process into a strategic guessing game, but one with gigantic stakes.

As a way to help voters with this task, we're introducing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, where we will track any ballots that get shared in a public forum (Twitter, Instagram, blogs, podcasts, etc). We're also offering voters the chance to participate anonymously by emailing a photo of their official ballots to futurerocklegends [at] gmail.com so it can tracked in the totals without the public exposure. The current Rock Hall Fan Vote leaders will of course also be recorded as a ballot.

There will be some understandable trepidation among voters about sharing their choices, but they should take comfort that many music writers have been posting their ballots online for years. (One of the benefits of these stacked ballots is that literally any combination of five artists is easily defensible.) To manage expectations, we don't believe this will be a meaningful sample size to predict the will of 1000+ voters, but let's have some fun and give it a try this year. We're grateful for anyone willing to help!

Click here to access the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker

Special thanks to @NotMrTibbs and the Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker team for the inspiration!