Sasquan Accepting Online Payment for Site Selection Voting

Sasquan members who want to vote in the 2017 site selection race are now able to electronically purchase the necessary advance memberships here.

When voting first opened on April 19 the con was only prepared to take checks in payment.

The press release follows the jump.

MEDIA RELEASE #2015-6A Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention
19-23 August 2015 at Spokane WA USA
http://www.sasquan.org
[email protected]
SITE SELECTION OPENS: ONLINE SITE SELECTION PAYMENT AVAILABLE

Spokane, Washington, 14 May 2015

Voting for the site of the 75th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in 2017, is now open. The bids which have filed to hold the convention are:

  • Helsinki in 2017, Helsinki Finland: dates 9-13 August, 2017
  • Montreal in 2017, Montreal, Quebec, Canada: dates 31 August to 4 September, 2017
  • Nippon in 2017, Shizuoka Japan; dates 24-28 August, 2017
  • DC17, Washington, DC, USA: dates 16-20 August, 2017

In order to vote for one of these bids, you must have a membership in Sasquan and you must pay an advance supporting membership fee of $40 to the 2017 Worldcon. That fee will get you a supporting membership in the 2017 Worldcon, whoever wins the right to hold the convention. Payment may be made online at https://sasquan.swoc.us/sasquan/sitevote-pay.php through Monday 10 August 2015, by mailed check arriving at our office through Monday 10 August 2015, or in person at Sasquan through 6 PM local time Friday 21 August 2015. You may have another person deliver your ballot and payment at Sasquan before that time as well.

Voting on site selection is conducted by paper ballots, and they are counted by representatives of all bids at Sasquan. There is no online voting. Once your vote is made, you may not change it. This is different from Hugo Award voting.

For further information about the bids, please go to http://sasquan.org/site-selection/.

Sasquan membership and registration information is available at https://sasquan.swoc.us/sasquan/reg.php

ENDS For general media enquiries about Sasquan please contact [email protected].

To unsubscribe, click here: [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe

ABOUT THE WORLD SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION
Founded in 1939, the World Science Fiction Convention is one of the largest international gatherings of authors, artists, editors, publishers, and fans of science fiction and fantasy. The annual Hugo Awards, the leading award for excellence in the fields of science fiction and fantasy, are voted on by the Worldcon membership and presented during the convention.
Sasquan is organized under the banner of the SWOC: http://swoc.org/contact.php

“World Science Fiction Society”, “WSFS”, “World Science Fiction Convention”, “Worldcon”, “NASFiC”, “Hugo Award”, the Hugo Award Logo, and the distinctive design of the Hugo Award Trophy Rocket are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.

5 thoughts on “Sasquan Accepting Online Payment for Site Selection Voting

  1. So does this mean none of the 3000 new supporting memberships that SASQUAN received up to now we’re able to vote in the 2017 site selection, or just that those votes have to be done by paper ballot?

    I saw a comment from Kevin Standlee speculating that the surge in WSFS memberships may have been due to 2017 site selection and not Puppygate. This announcement seems to make that unlikely, unless we have numbers of people who paid $40 for membership in SASQUAN and (another $40? for) supporting memberships in 2017 WorldCon.

  2. The first 40$ membership fee is for SASQUAN 2015. To vote, you will have to prepay an advance supporting membership for 2017.

  3. Mad Professah:
    So does this mean none of the 3000 new supporting memberships that SASQUAN received up to now we’re able to vote in the 2017 site selection, or just that those votes have to be done by paper ballot?
    Every person who joined, including those 3000 new supporting members, is eligible to vote on the 2017 site selection upon paying their Advance Supporting Membership for the 2017 Worldcon in the process described here.

    I saw a comment from Kevin Standlee speculating that the surge in WSFS memberships may have been due to 2017 site selection and not Puppygate.

    You misunderstand me. I said that part of the surge, but probably not much of it, could be attributed to it. Also, Spokane had a lot of supporting members already, given how many people voted in the 2015 Worldcon site selection who never converted.

    This announcement seems to make that unlikely, unless we have numbers of people who paid $40 for membership in SASQUAN and (another $40? for) supporting memberships in 2017 WorldCon.

    I’ve never said it was the largest group, but it was always going to be a factor. With a hotly contested four way race, there were always going to be a lot of people who were not attending Worldcon who wanted to have a voice in deciding where the 2017 Worldcon would be held.

    To reiterate Site Selection basics: In order to cast a ballot on the 2017 Worldcon, you must:

    1. Be at least a Supporting Member of the 2015 Worldcon.
    2. Pay the Advance Supporting Membership fee for the 2017 Worldcon. (This automatically makes you a Supporting member of the 2017 Worldcon no matter who wins the election.)

    The money you pay for item 2 is held in trust by the 2015 Worldcon. They turn it over to the 2017 Worldcon no matter who wins. The 2017 Worldcon then gives you a Supporting membership.

    Money you pay to a bid committee before the election is a donation to that bid committee that helps them run their campaign. If that bid wins, the bid may give you some sort of perk related to the amount of money you donated, such as a discount off an attending membership in their convention. You need to talk to the individual bid committee about what they are offering. If the bid loses, you get that bid’s thanks for having helped fund their campaign, and that’s all. (Personally, I support all bids at some level.)

    Bias Alert: I am a director of the Montreal in 2017 bid committee’s parent non-profit corporation and am listed as one of their committee on the ballot.

    I think this always sounds confusing to people first coming to the process. Bear in mind that the process is primarily designed for the convenience of the people who vote every year. If you vote in every Site Selection election, then in any given year, you’re only paying for the membership in the two-years-hence Worldcon because you paid for your membership to this year’s Worldcon two years ago. If a site you plan to attend wins, you then immediately convert to an Attending membership (at the lowest possible rate); if you don’t plan on attending the winning site, you don’t convert, but you already have a Supporting membership in that convention, so you’re all paid up and will be able to participate in the two-years-hence Worldcon as a Supporting member, including the Hugo voting that year and (upon payment of another ASM) the election of the Worldcon site two years after that.

  4. “or just that those votes have to be done by paper ballot?”
    It’s not so much that have to be done by paper ballot, as that until this you needed to be able to pay $40 with the ballot. Which is an easy enough thing if you live in America, or at least have a U.S. bank account, but largely excludes those fans from the rest of the world.

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