[3] In 2009, the festival introduced separate People's Choice Awards for Documentaries and Midnight Madness.
[4] In 2015, it also introduced a People's Choice Award for its satellite Canada's Top Ten festival,[5] which was discontinued after 2018 due to TIFF's decision to switch the Canada's Top Ten program from a dedicated festival to a series of week-long theatrical screenings.
[6] However, to ensure that the voting process does not bias the award toward films that screened in larger theatres and that a film's own cast and crew cannot stuff the ballot box, the overall number of votes received is also weighted against the size of the screening audience.
[6] Because each film is screened multiple times over the course of the entire festival, the process also enables the organizers to evaluate which films are generating more audience buzz, by virtue of a significant increase in attendance and/or People's Choice votes at the follow-up screenings.
[6] At the 2004 festival, no first or second runners-up were officially named for the People's Choice Award; however, festival director Piers Handling did provide the media with a list of numerous other films that had been in the running, including Crash, Gunner Palace, I, Claudia, Up and Down, 3-Iron, Ma Mère, The Holy Girl, Red Dust, Brides, Saving Face and Sideways.