How are the Ballon d'Or scores determined?

Question

The Ballon d'Or is presented by France Football and honours the male player deemed to have performed the best over the previous year. I've read that it is based on voting by football journalists but I haven't been able to find out

• Who are the voting journalists and which countries are they from?

• Whether the system is based on one vote per journalist, or are the votes weighted in any way?

Answer 1

First of all, let's look at the rules and regulation of Ballon d'Or published in 2016(Not able to find 2017 rules),

1. Only respected football Journalists will take part in the voting process (most of the Journalists will be from France, England, Spain, Germany and France Football media outlets.)
   • France Football article shows different jurors from France, Argentina, Japan, Mexico and Algeria who voted in favor of Cristiano Ronaldo, winner of Ballon d'Or 2017.
2. France Football will use a pool of 30 top players who Journalists can vote for.
3. The scoring system is likely to be the same. Every Journalists will pick his top three in preferred order. No.1 pick has 5 points, No.2 has 3 followed by 1 point for no.3 pick.
   • Article published by France Football shows few jurors vote which indicates they choose their first five pick.
4. France Football won’t be revealing any top 3 finalists before the ceremony. Which means it will be a total surprise from voting process to announcement.
5. France Football has announced they will be revealing the winner in December every year. unlike the FIFA Ballon d'Or ceremony which took place on second Monday of January.

So,

1. Who are the voting journalists and which countries are they from?
   Respected football journalists predominantly from France, England, Spain, Germany and France Football media outlets are the ones to take part in voting process.
2. Whether the system is based on one vote per journalist, or are the votes weighted in any way?
   Jurors will pick their top players with different points per their order of selection (See rules above), which will be totaled to decide the eventual winner. For 2017 Ballon d'Or Cristiano won with 946 points with 176 jurors voting. See: The complete classification of the Ballon d'Or 2017

Answer 2

I just wanted to include a summary of the actual Jurors in the 2018 Ballon D'or Selection Process. I was not able to get this until this year.

You can see the jurors (each of whom is a respected sports journalist) and their ranking of the 5 best players.