Westercon, created in 1947, and which in its heyday drew a couple thousand fans, is held in a Western North American city – if one wants to hold it. Which right now is the problem.
In April, the 2021 Seattle Westercon announced it had disbanded. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, stewards of the Westercon service mark, said they will hold a Westercon business meeting and conduct 2023 site selection at Loscon 47 in November. Originally, there was an unopposed 2023 bid for Tempe, but they withdrew last week.
The situation is made even stickier because the April 15 deadline for filing to be on the Westercon site selection ballot has passed and cannot be extended under the Westercon Bylaws. However, Kevin Standlee, Westercon 73 Business Meeting Chair, explained in a post at Westercon.org it is still possible for groups interested in hosting Westercon 75 to file as a write-in bid up to the close of voting at Loscon – which will be open only on Friday, November 26, 2021, and is scheduled to close at 8 p.m. Pacific Time on that day. So no bids will be listed on the ballot, but write-in bids will be allowed. Standlee describes the process in full here.
Should no bid be selected through the site selection voting process, the Westercon Business Meeting can select a site by a three-fourths vote. If they don’t, it’s then up to the LASFS Board of Directors to select a site.
Standlee’s condensed version of these options is:
- Site Selection will continue with write-in bids only.
- Site Selection voting will be on Friday only, but will stay open later than usual (8 p.m.)
- Any group that files the usual paperwork is eligible to win as a write-in.
- If no eligible group wins, then the Business Meeting on Saturday (time TBA) can select a site.
- If the Business Meeting cannot decide, then LASFS decides.
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
It’s time Kevin Standlee was issued with a cape and a superhero name. Captain FinePrint, perhaps?
Yes, Kevin definitely needs that superhero Captain FinePrint! He uses his powers only for good.
Motion to appoint Kevin Standlee “Captain FinePrint” by Acclamation?
(We promise to use the StandleeSignal sparingly.)
I vote “AYE” on the motion.
And as a survivor of the epic Westercon Business Meeting in San Jose that eventually selected Sacramento (both swell cons, I add), I beg of someone, anyone to save Captain FinePrint (who wrote most of the rules and thus gets hoisted on his own petard) and West Coast fandom at large from having to do that again.
Because I know the LASFS Board doesn’t want to.
How can they select a site when there’s none to be selected?
Lurkertype:
Thank you. On the bright side, I learned enough in 2011 that I know how to handle it more effectively and I think avoid the parliamentary dead end into which that meeting almost walked. The short version is that the meeting will need to resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole so it can thrash out a decision with multiple test votes if necessary, and only after the CotW makes up its mind then formally take up consideration of the selection of a site.
Jeffrey Jones:
The rules say that we have to hold the election, and that we have to make provision for write-in vote. Until the end of the election, any group can file a bid under the rules, and if they get enough votes, they win.
(I administered the 1995 NASFiC site selection election. Although there were bids on the ballot, there was a cockeyed write-in bid that filed a — barely — compliant bid with one second left before the close of voting. They did not win, but they had more votes that one of the bids that was on the ballot.)
If the election goes to the Business Meeting, all of the rules about filed bids go away other than the one that requires the site to be somewhere in North America (or Hawaii) west of 104°W. That means that the Meeting could award the bid to anyone who stands up and says, “Okay, I’ll do it if you want me to do so.” Essentially that is what the Meeting did in 2011 when it selected Kevin Roche and Andy Trembley.
Note, however, that while presiding over that meeting, I did declare that nobody can be awarded a Westercon bid against their will, even if the meeting voted unanimously to award it to them!
Minneapolis in ’23!
So — no Chocolate Covered Manhole Westercon that some LASFSian will have to keep track of til 2023! Excellent ruling.
The Tempe bid refunded my money that I had given them to support them as a “Friend”. There was a time when someone, Elaine Peltz to be precise, stepped up and the Westercon was held at the Burbank Hilton if I recollect. Westercon has been close to being canceled before and managed to survive. I even remember when we had competing bids. I hope that a write in bid or bids campaign so we know who to vote for at Loscon.
Hopefully things can get resolved before Loscon, and a “write in” bid steps up.
This Covid-19 mess has even made hotels reluctant to allocate their space more than a few months out. (Yes, one of my annual cons is having problems nailing down our annual hotel after a 2 year hiatus. Everyone is still nervous.)
See you at Loscon.