A Blast from the Hugo Past

[kevin_standlee]

Tom Whitmore, going through the files of Alva Rogers, found a copy of the 1964 Hugo Awards Final Ballot voting results, and I've posted them to the Hugo Awards web site. Back in those days, voting was "first past the post," meaning that the winner was whoever had more votes than any other nominee, not necessarily (or even likely) a majority.

Discounting the entries for "No Vote," (blanks, abstentions, etc.), which shouldn't count toward the number of ballots cast, I checked the percentages of votes with preference, and look at what percentage of the votes it took to win the Hugo Award in 1964:

Novel: Here Gather the Stars (Way Station) by Clifford D. Simak: 24%
Short Fiction: “No Truce with Kings” by Poul Anderson [F&SF Jun 1963]: 37%
Professional Magazine: Analog Science Fiction and Fact ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.: 34%
Fanzine: Amra ed. by George H. Scithers: 32%
Professional Artist: Ed Emshwiller: 30%
Publisher: Ace: 36%

Or, to put it another way, between roughly two-thirds and three-quarters of all the voters who expressed a preference preferred some other nominee over the one that won in each category.

This to me is why our current Hugo voting system (instant-runoff voting), complex as it is to so many people, is more fair and more likely to return a result that represents a candidate who, if not necessarily best-liked by a majority, is certainly not actively disliked by a majority of the voters. (This says nothing about those people who don't vote, of course.)

Comments

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity (because I don't have time to go over to the site), how many nominees in each category were there, the usual 5 or 6?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

4 or 5 depending on category. The table does not indicate how many nominations each work received; this was only the final ballot results.

[michael j. walsh (from livejournal.com)]

So ... when did the current Hugo ballot system start?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly certain. The current system is listed in the 1971 Constitution, but not the 1963 Constitution that would have governed the 1964 Hugo Awards; however, the historical record of WSFS Constitutions is rather spotty before 1974. Sometime between 1964 and 1974, WSFS adopted what is currently known as Instant Runoff Voting, although it was typically called the "preferential ballot" until fairly recently.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

And 4 people voted "no award" on a ballot that contained Way Station, Witch World, Glory Road, Cat's Cradle, and Dune World!!!! Remarkable.