The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon announced today they have detected at least 377 fraudulent votes for the Hugo Awards, most meant to benefit a particular unnamed finalist, and have disqualified those votes. As a result, the beneficiary of those votes now will not win in their category.
The Glasgow 2024 Hugo Awards Statement is published below, followed by a video commentary by Nicholas Whyte, WSFS Division head and Hugo Administrator.
In the course of tallying the votes on the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, the Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administration team detected some unusual data.
Paragraph 6.2 of the WSFS Constitution states that “In all matters arising under this Constitution, only natural persons may introduce business, nominate, or vote, except as specifically provided otherwise in this Constitution. No person may cast more than one vote on any issue or more than one ballot in any election.”
A large number of votes in 2024 were cast by accounts which fail to meet the criteria of being “natural persons”, with obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics. These included, for instance, a run of voters whose second names were identical except that the first letter was changed, in alphabetical order; and a run of voters whose names were translations of consecutive numbers.
Many of these votes favoured one finalist in particular, who we will call Finalist A. This pattern of data is startlingly and obviously different from the votes for any other finalist in 2024, and indeed for any finalist in any of the previous years where any member of the current Hugo Subcommittee has been involved with administering the Hugo final ballot.
In addition to patterns observable in the data, we received a confidential report that at least one person had sponsored the purchase of WSFS memberships by large numbers of individuals, who were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted as the sponsor wished.
On the basis of the above evidence, we have concluded that at least 377 votes have been cast fraudulently, of a total of 3,813 final ballot votes that we received. We have therefore disqualified those 377 votes from the final vote tally. This decision is not one made lightly, but we are duty bound as the Hugo Administrators to protect the Hugo Awards and to act against fraud.
We have no evidence that Finalist A was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. We are therefore not identifying them. Finalist A has not been disqualified from the 2024 Hugo Awards. However, they do not win in their category, once the invalid votes have been disallowed.
No other votes have been disallowed. The only votes disallowed are those which we have positively identified as not cast by natural persons.
We recognise that after the Hugo voting in 2023, many in the community will, understandably, have questions about this. Unfortunately, our ability to answer is very limited, due to our responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the ballot and data protection regulations. There are proposals to institute a system of independent audit for Hugo votes. But at present such a system does not exist, therefore the raw 2024 voting data cannot and will not be shared outside the Glasgow 2024 Hugo team.
However, the full voting results, nominating statistics, and voting statistics will be published immediately after the Hugo Awards ceremony on August 11th, 2024 as previously agreed in our transparency statement. Those will not include the 377 votes which have been disallowed but will include the other 3,436 votes.
We believe that it is important for transparency that we inform you now about what has happened. We want to reassure 2024 Hugo voters that the ballots cast were counted fairly. Most of all, we want to assure the winners of this year’s Hugos that they have won fair and square, without any arbitrary or unexplained exclusion of votes or nominees and without any possibility that their award had been gained through fraudulent means.
Announcement from the Glasgow 2024 Astounding, Lodestar, and Hugo Administrator
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@Lis Carey:
I don’t think it’s interesting because I don’t see it happening. I just went back through the whole thread. I see quite a few people desirous of more information/transparency, but in general people are supportive and complimentary of Glasgow’s handling of the situation. The relevant privacy laws have been adequately explained, and while that leaves many people’s curiosity unsatisfied, people accept that Glasgow is acting in accordance with its understanding of the law.
You made a giant unsupported leap from ChewyGlacier’s hypothetical (later clarified as not applying) that if certain people were beneficiaries there might be smoffish self-interest involved to suggesting Chewy meant “We know Glasgow 2024 is guitly; now we just have to find some evidence.”
Then you made another giant unsupported leap from ErsatzCulture’s attempt to clarify the different names one person is known by to “Unless, as I said, you start from the premise that Glasgow 2024 is GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY, and we just have to decide how.”
I see a lot of dancing around direct accusations against Chengdu and/or Chinese fandom, but I think you are reading far, far too much into people’s comments if you think they are starting from a premise of Glasgow being guilty of anything.
@Lis Carey – the press release identified this as an issue with “non-natural person” voting, which is disallowed.
Now, I suspect that some Hugo administrators might have judged that slate voting also reflected a form of “non-natural person” voting, and had those admins been in charge in 2015, then the Puppy controversy probably never would been a thing, because those votes would have just been disallowed. But that year’s admin did not rule that way. And on the heels of that, we as a community have now decided that slate voting does not count as non-natural person voting.
My broader point is that we can’t spell out every possibility in the constitution, and that Hugo Admins need some amount of discretion to say “nope, that’s wrong.” And is also why I don’t agree with the people who think we’d get better results by hiring a completely outside firm to run the Hugos – they don’t know what looks weird, like people who have done the job before do, or even just have existed in our community long enough to spot things that are out of place.
I can almost hear Puppies (especially Rabid ones) screaming about being declared “not human”…
Yes, x amount of real people filling out their own ballots the way someone else told them to = against the spirit of the Hugos.
1 entity creating multiple memberships to vote more than once = against the rules.
Also the second is much more clear-cut unless the entity goes to a lot more effort to make the puppet members look like real people.
@Maki
What exactly prevents the convention from investigating and saying (for example),”Following our investigation, it appears that claims regarding involvement in a fraudulent scheme by individuals connected to Chengdu 2023 have some substantiation. However, as no specific individuals can be conclusively identified, we recommend the following actions to prevent similar incidents in future Worldcons: .”?
Or , “Based on our investigation using anonymized data, the patterns of fraudulent behavior observed this year do not appear to match the behaviors reported by the Hugo administrators in 2023 and/or the site selection administrators in 2021. However, we recommend the following measures to mitigate future risks: .”
No one is being specifically named, no personal informaton is revealed, the language can be as cautious as they want to readily avoid defamation or libel suits, but the results will help the future WSFS learn about the details in a way that will allow them to thoroughly act against this behavior, e.g. through Business Meeting resolutions.
Finally, as to the assertion this has nothing to do with 2023, I firmly disagree. This attempted fraud would not be happening this year if the 2023 Worldcon was not in Chengdu. And besides that, there is reason to suspect the fraudulent behavior may concern a specific nominated work that is intimately tied to the Chinese concom of the 2023 Worldcon. Finally, this attempted fraud may well illuminate oddities of the 2023 Hugo Awards, the 2023 nomination process, and perhaps even the 2021 site selection.
It is absolutely relevant to look at this holistically rather than pretending it concerns only this year.
Tammy Coxen:
I believe anyone familiar with your Chengdu debacle commentary would be unsurprised that your are worried about protecting Hugo Admin discretion. But I suspect you are very much in a minority in that regard.
@ChewyGlacier – So do you think Nicholas shouldn’t have been able to throw out these votes because the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say that paying someone to vote a particular way isn’t allowed? He used his discretion to decide that these were invalid votes. We can’t imagine and include every edge case in the Constitution.
It sounds like the 377 votes included votes from two separate categories.
Category 1 — Votes cast on Ballots for which Glasgow believed there was no natural person behind the memberships fassociated with those Ballots — these were disqualified by Glasgow. Many of these were cast for Finalist A.
Category 2 — Votes from members whose membership was paid for by a third party, and who, when asked by Glasgow, admitted this was the case. Glasgow refunded their membership costs and cancelled the votes. It is not clear what fraction of these were cast for Finalist A. Left unsaid is whether the memberships of those of whom it was suspected were paid for by the third party, but did not admit to this being the case, were refunded and their votes cancelled.
Glasgow does not say how many of the 377 fall into Category 1, and in Category 2.
(Do other people interpret the statement along these general lines?)
With respect to Category 1, I believe that Glasgow had every right (and also the duty) to disqualify these votes, and would have no obligation to refund the associated membership costs.
With respect to Category 2, I think Glasgow had every right to investigate what happened, and to ask the members involved to accept refunds and (if accepted) cancel the votes. But if the members did not voluntarily accept the refund and cancellation, I don’t think that Glasgow could do anything about their votes (nor should they). We’d like to think every vote cast is based on reasoned evaluations of the creators or works in question, by the member casting the vote, but there’s no reason to think that this is what always happens. Spouses cast votes for each other; or people who have no knowledge about a particular category will let their vote be decided by someone they know who is knowledgeable. Voters with a vested interest, economic or otherwise, in the works of a publisher will accept influence from that publisher for their works and authors. And this isn’t so much shady as it is simple human nature.
@bill
Agree with your category 1.
That’s not how I see category 2. It is fine for someone else to pay for a membership as long as there are no strings attached to how they vote. In this case, it seems the entity behind the ballot stuffing made multiple memberships which voted for Finalist A (category 1). Then also had people make their own memberships which they voted for Finalist A and which were refunded by the third party when they showed they had (category 2).
Where either can be clearly identified, I agree with their votes being removed. We don’t know how many of the removed votes fall into which category. And there’s probably a blurry line between the two anyway.
No need to refund any of those memberships. As I understand it, WSFS memberships are non-refundable. (This is why you can only transfer the attending supplement to another member — to avoid 1 membership possibly getting 2 votes.)
If people are buying memberships for others it should be openly discussed in public when it is happening, like if some group offered to pay the dues for high school students interested in science fiction.
When it is going on in private and is discovered later, that’s going to look like an effort to buy a site selection, nomination or Hugo Award.
bill:
Um, hardly. Glasgow said
which is sadly ambiguous and has led to several cases of confusion before (so good journalists should press Glasgow to state this clearly), but must be interpreted that the Mysterious Sponsor refunded the cost to the individuals only after they showed their ballots. If they had then admitted this to Glasgow en masse, it would not be just one “confidential report”; also, why in the world should Glasgow refund them money the Sponsor had paid?
rcade:
Yes, agreed. Like when Mary Robinette Kowal (and then others) sponsored supporting memberships in 2015. It was made very clear they could vote any way they wanted. And she still said she would decline nominations for the following year to avoid any appearance of unfair advantage.
@laura — are you asserting that the same entity was responsible for votes in both “Category 1” and “Category 2”? and that the votes in “Category 2” did benefit Finalist A?
Because the press release does not say either of those things.
Is there support in the WSFS Constitution for removing the votes from “Category 2”? Because these were cast by natural persons, which is all that is required.
@Jan Vanek jr.
I interpreted “were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted as the sponsor wished” to mean that Glasgow, after getting the confidential report, investigated and asked the voter “did you vote as the sponsor wished?” and that if the voter said “yes I did” then Glasgow refunded the membership costs.
It sounds as if you are interpreting it to mean that the sponsor gave a refund to the member if the member confirmed to the sponsor “Yes I voted as you wished”, an interpretation that didn’t occur to me until your post. Yes, as you say, the press release is ambiguous. You say the wording “must be interpreted” this way, I think it could be interpreted either way (otherwise, why say it is ambiguous?)
@bill The statement says that in addition to the weird data patterns like fake names (category 1), they also got a report about the sponsor refunding those who confirmed to the sponsor they’d voted as instructed (category 2). These are not neccessarily two completely distinct categories.
So yes it sounds to me that all eliminated votes which largely favored Finalist A are the result of the actions of one entity.
bill: I say the wording is ambiguous because it is per se, prima facie, on the face of it: There is indeed no rule of grammar that would preclude “were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted” to mean “WE refunded them the Sponsor’s money after they confirmed it to US”. You must evaluate the whole context, both linguistic and factual, as I noted, and then the reading is clear.
Anybody have data on how many people buy supporting memberships after the Hugo final ballot is released and then vote the Hugos with them, but don’t convert to attending and/or vote site selection?
I suspect it’s not that large. I know there are people who buy supporting memberships when they know they can’t attend but they want to participate in the WSFS business (Hugo, though usually including nomination or site select) and they will tend to support early. If, in reality, few buy during Hugo voting, it might make it reasonable to not grant Hugo voting rights to memberships bought after publication of the final ballot and before it closes. Not a perfect plan but it does seriously reduce the effectiveness of buying bulk memberships to buy-a-Hugo, as you must pay for them in advance, before you know you even make the ballot. However, with a concentrated nomination campaign it would still be possible for those who plan ahead.
In such a system, you can still buy a supporting membership, but there is a deadline if you want to have Hugo voting rights with it. This also makes sense from a good voting sense, in that it is better that your voting population did not decide to join because they saw the ballot, but rather out of genuine desire to help with the process in general.
More broadly, as long as we sell just the right to vote, it is subject to abuse. However, there are fans who want it but don’t wish to abuse it, and so it is hard to find a solution. So far the best solution has been to look out for signs of abuse and try to fix them. This year’s abuse was blindingly obvious, but that’s just stupidity on their part. Some abuse is not just subtle but within the rules. A similar problem exists for site selection. In the past, abuse was rare and we got away with not being resilient against it. Sadly, this seems to no longer be the case. We want all genuine members of the community to be able to vote, but to bar bloc or bulk voting (and nominating) and attempts to buy votes. Not easy.
Around the time of finalist announcement is when I used to always buy my supporting membership. I would nominate with the previous year’s membership. For the last several years, I have participated in site selection so I get it well before then.
Looking at the oddities in nomination stats for this year suggests these bad actors might have been with us since at least then. Not neccessarily related, but maybe.
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@Laura, do you feel it would be a burden if it were required you purchase your supporting membership a week earlier, before the finalist announcement?
In 2015, thousands of fans bought supporting memberships to No Award the puppies in the final ballot. Your proposal would make it impossible to do that again.
Also, I think a not-insignificant number of people buy supporting memberships after the finalists are announced so they can access the Hugo Voters Packet. Worldcons really appreciate that bonus income.
Possibly, as sometimes it would be the reminder that I needed to get the current year’s membership. It was a good thing that supporting members who purchased after the finalist announcement in 2015 could vote in Hugos. I’m very against taking any of the current rights of supporting members away.
@Brad T. It’s not even clear that voters are promised confidentiality of their ballots.
Well, confidentiality of ballots is common in democracies, and lobbied for since Chartist times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism
In short, it’s a fairly established principle. (Jus’ sayin’.) GDPR is an additional factor.
@Bill whose privacy is being protected by withholding information about them?
@Abi Brown @Bill I think it’s probably the finalist’s privacy they need to protect at this point, right? Assuming they genuinely had nothing to do with it, it’s better for it not to be known who this scam was in aid ofI think it’s probably the finalist’s privacy they need to protect at this point, right? Assuming they genuinely had nothing to do with it, it’s better for it not to be known who this scam was in aid of.
@Bill I think Abi B’s right.
@Elio M Garcia In fact, it would be interesting to see if there were any commonalities between the site selection votes that were questioned (but allowed to remain in play) — such as consecutive numerical email addresses, IIRC, and lack of identifying physical addresses — and these 377 fraudulent voters.
I concur, it would be most useful to revisit this if someone has the data somewhere…
@Bill It sounds like the 377 votes included votes from two separate categories…
…Do other people interpret the statement along these general lines?)
Yes, I concur, two sources 1) fake members and 2) Bribed folk.
IMHO, assuming (and this is an assumption based on some of the comments to this post), that somehow this is a spill-over from the Chengdu Worldcon, this whole episode underlines the need for host nations to have low corruption as well as respect for the democratic process. What we do need are some minimum democracy and freedom standards that putative host nations must achieve before they are eligible for site selection.
Here I remind that there is a proposal going to this year’s Worldcon previously covered in File770…
https://file770.com/wsfs-2024-motion-to-add-human-rights-and-democracy-standards-to-worldcon-site-qualifications/
This proposal also comes with added human rights benefits. Some Worldcon bids make some members of our community illegal in some host nations who bid, including a recent past one and a current one.
Perhaps this proposal warrants broader support?
It would not stop ballot-stuffing attempts per se but arguably would make them less likely.
That proposal, bluntly, is racist garbage that somehow magically manages to carve off nearly the entire global south and the vast majority of Asian, African, and Muslim countries from ever hosting a Worldcon. It’s embarrassing to me that it’s even being considered as a part of a World Science Fiction Society’s constitution. It won’t even solve the problem that it proposes to solve. Hell, the second-most-recent scandal about manipulating the Hugo Awards comes nearly 100% from countries that are on the “good” list in that.
The human rights resolution has its own thread. It would be better to comment on it there, since there’s plenty to discuss.
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Please forgive me for treating these donnybrooks like locked room mysteries, but there’s something wrong.
If this were rigging the awards to benefit a single finalist (though note the statement doesn’t actually say that), and someone were willing to blow that kind of money on that, why would they be stupid enough to number their fake voters? I mean, there’s another Brian here with a different letter and folks assumed I was branching out like in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. Far too obvious.
There’s nothing wrong with anonymity in and of itself. Many of us have joined Worldcon anonymously.
It was noted upthread that a similar pattern occured in 2021 wrt site selection. The simplest explanation is that some Chinese science fiction clubs (whose members lack USA-and-Europe-compatible credit cards or email addresses) had already pooled resources to vote like this in 2021, maybe in 2023 too, and were just continuing the practice of low-income and student fans pooling resources to buy joint memberships. But to vote for what? There’s no China bid on the table.
In the sequentially numbered money order scandal of yore, the Hugo administrators had the sense of fair play to ask the voters why they did that and to publish the answer. I, like bill, assumed on first reading that the administrators had surely contacted the voters to ask what happened. Because of course you’d ask. Why wouldn’t you? It’s the dog that didn’t bark.