A series of ballots for the 2024 Hugo Awards, scheduled to be held on August 11 at the World Congress in Glasgow, Scotland, were deemed fraudulent and banned. Of the 3,813 ballots cast, 377 (9.89%) were found to have been signed by non-“natural persons” using pseudonyms, etc. All are believed to be supporting a specific, undisclosed nominee.
Since its establishment in 1953, the Hugo Awards have been one of the highest honors in the science fiction community, with award categories covering short stories, novels, movies, television and comics. The final voting period for the 2024 Hugo Awards runs from April 20 to July 20.
In Hugo Administrator’s statement Nicholas White On July 22 (full story here ), Hoax publicly disclosed what had happened:
“During the process of tallying the final votes for the 2024 Hugo Awards, the Glasgow 2024 Hugo Awards management team discovered some unusual data.”
Add to:
“A large number of the 2024 votes were cast by accounts that did not meet the criteria of a ‘natural person’ and had obvious pseudonyms and/or other disqualifying characteristics. For example, they included a series of voters with the same first name except that the first letter was The alphabetical order was changed; as well as a group of electors whose names were translations of consecutive numbers.
“Many of these votes were in favor of one finalist in particular, which we’ll call Finalist A. This pattern of data is strikingly and markedly different from the votes cast for any other finalist in 2024, and in fact, for the former As with any finalist for several years, current Hugo subcommittee members are involved in the administration of the final Hugo vote.
Hugo Award voting is open only to paying members of the World Science Fiction Association. The awards use a two-tier voting system – members submit nominees and a final vote selects winners in all categories. The award is administered by the organizers of that year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon for short). Membership for this year’s Worldcon is £45 (approximately US$58).
White also said administrators were secretly told that at least one person had been sponsoring voters to support a preferred candidate. If true, someone spent at least £16,965 (about $22,000) to distort votes. Since there is no clear evidence that the candidates knowingly participated in the scheme, they have remained anonymous and remain involved in the process.
White:
“We have no evidence that Finalist A was fully aware of the fraud that was being voted for for them, let alone in any way responsible for this operation. Therefore, we are unable to identify them. Finalist A has not been canceled from the 2024 Hugos However, once an invalid vote is rejected, they will not win in their category.
In recent years, there have been a surprising number of scandals surrounding the Hugo Awards. Last year in particular, it was revealed that some candidates were removed from the final ballot due to political sensitivities (the 2023 World Congress is being held in Chengdu, China). Organizers’ immediate announcement of irregularities in this year’s vote was seen as an act of transparency.
From conclusion to White’s statement:
“We feel it is important for transparency that we tell you now what happened. We want to assure 2024 Hugo voters that the votes cast were counted fairly. Most importantly, we want to acknowledge the winners of this year’s Hugo Awards Nominees warrant that their award will be fair and impartial, that there will be no arbitrary or unexplained exclusion of votes or nominees, and that there will be no possibility of the award being obtained through fraudulent means.
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