Changing the Hugo Electorate: The Spectrum of Changes

[kevin_standlee]

Attempting to restore relatively impartial WSFS Business Meeting Chair hat. I'm human, and if I'm on anyone's "side" in the ongoing saga of Puppygate, it is The Hugo Awards' side, attempting to work against anything that I see that harms the Awards, or if there are nothing but bad choices, to minimize the harm if possible.

Over at Making Light (which I know immediately brands me as an Evil Social Justice Warrior interesting in killing baby dogs and Enslaving All of Fandom, but I can't stop other people from hallucinating) is a fascinating discussion about voting systems with guest poster Bruce Schneier. Right up front are the two main points, which I find quite compelling (emphasis mine):

1. I think the best choice would be to do nothing. It’s not at all obvious that this is anything other than a temporary aberration, and that any fixes won’t be subject to a different set of abuses and need to be fixed again. I think the worst situation would be a series of rule changes in a continuous effort to stave off different abuses. I don’t think highly of a bureaucracy that tinkers with election rules until it gets the results it wants.


2. If we choose to ignore (1), the second-best choice is to modify the electorate. The problem isn’t the rules of the vote; the problem is that a voting bloc was able to recruit voters from outside the usual community. Trying to fix that problem by changing the voting rules is very difficult, and will have all sorts of unintended consequences.

(Note that "do nothing" above means "don't fiddle with the rules; let the members vote using the existing system as it's written." It most definitely does not mean "throw away your final Hugo ballot.")

There are many, many proposals being tossed around. As of the time I write this, the only one that's been officially submitted is the "4/6" proposal that reduces nominations to 4 per category per member and increases the number of finalists in each category to 6. Note that any variation on this can be and if I can manage it will be dealt with as amendments to the numbers currently penciled in as 4 and 6. This post is not about procedural changes like this. What I want to discuss here, in response to a question received in e-mail, is changing the electorate, albeit by changing who can vote.

I think we can consider changes that tackle only the "who can vote" issue (as opposed to "how can you vote," of which 4/6 is the first entry in the field) along a spectrum of changes:

1. Expand the Electorate/Reduce the Cost: On the theory that more voters means it's hard for voting slates to game the system and that More Is Always Better, we have proposals that want to make it easier to nominate for the Hugo Awards by creating a less-expensive Hugo Nominating Only class of membership. (There are different names for this and complications, but they all fall into this category IMO.) The cost of this HNO membership would be a number less than the current cost of a Supporting membership (currently $40 this year; $50 next year). As the figure in the blank goes down, goes the theory, the number of people voting goes up. Different people have proposed different costs for this, going all the way down to zero, i.e. "It shouldn't cost anything at all to vote in a fan-sourced award."


2. Do Nothing to the Electorate: This means leave the membership rules unchanged. Supporting and Attending members of the three-year spectrum (last year, this year, and next year) would continue to be allowed to nominate for the Hugo Awards.


3. Restrict the Electorate/Increase the Cost: Some say that if you make it more expensive to nominate, you'll discourage voters interested in what some perceive to be "wrecking" behavior. There are multiple mechanisms suggested for this, including removing the last year/next year group of voters (thus only the current Worldcon's members of any voting class could nominate), raising the cost of the existing class of supporting memberships, or only permitting attending members of the three-year spread (or maybe only the current Worldcon) to nominate. The cost to vote here thus can start at the existing $40 Supporting membership price and extend upward to infinity.

The intriguing thing to me is that you can find lots of support for all of these proposals and their many variations. I have no idea which proposals will actually make it to the Business Meeting. There's a process for submitting them, and a deadline (two weeks before the first BM) by which proposals must be submitted. It's quite likely that there will be multiple overlapping and conflicting proposals, which will make the Preliminary Business Meeting very interesting as we try to hash out conflicts and boil things down to single issues that can be debated and voted at the subsequent meetings.

There is nothing procedurally wrong with any of these proposals. They all have supporters, and only a fully-realized orderly debate and fair vote of the attending members of WSFS who participate can resolve what is at its heart a subjective opinion. I will remind people of what I wrote a couple of days ago about "fairness" and "winning" not being synonyms. I can guarantee that I'll try to give you a fair process. I can't guarantee that you'll get your way, and I can guarantee that there will be many people who do not get their way.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Personally I would prefer that attending memberships not be required; that would price me out of the Hugo Voting. And while I wouldn't mind seeing the cost of a supporting membership come down somewhat, I would hesitate to lower it to zero. I guess I'm in the "leave it unchanged" column there.

But I will have to depend on the WorldCon business meeting to sort it out. I think there are some advantages to requiring 2 years to change anything--hopefully there will be time to think things through logically.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Agreed about the needs-two-years thing, although it clearly has a lot of people tearing their hair out because they want us to Do Something Right Now. I've never advocated the constitutional change process take fewer than two years. Basic governing documents are not supposed to be easy to change. That's not a bug; it's a feature.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Just to be clear (and slightly off-topic), Kevin, but you have an amendment in requiring a popular vote to change the constitution. If that passes, will it still be two years to make a change or does the proposal add a year?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I addressed this elsewhere in depth.

Popular Ratification, if adopted this year, will add an extra year to the amendment-ratification process (making it three years instead of two) for anything first adopted next year.

Anything that gets first passage this year in Spokane is subject to final ratification in Kansas City, even if Popular Ratification passes this year.

If Popular Ratification passes, anything that gets first passage next year in Kansas City will be sent to the 2017 Worldcon for initial ratification, and if 2017's Business Meeting ratifies 2016 proposals, they'll be sent to 2018's members for a final vote of all members (attending and supporting).

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

thanks

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

One of my thoughts was require supporting for this year OR attending for last or next in order to nominate. That does increase nomination cost significantly.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

The horrible thing about the change which would restrict us to current Worldcon members only suggestion is that it would make it easier, not harder, for slate voters to come in en masse withouth prior Worldcon involvement and skew the nominating pool. Of course all those people who voted the Rabid Puppies slate (as has been noted elswhere, it's actually the RP slate that appeared on the finalists list - Sad Puppy/RP shared suggestions were on, no SP but not RP suggestions appeared and some RP not SP suggestions appeared) will automatically be able to nominate next year, but then they'll have to join again. Against this we have all the other members who may nominate.
Absent the 5% rule issue, getting rid of the multi-year nomination right is more likely to increase the power of slate voters rather than decrease them.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

How so? Now there's only a requirement for supporting in this, last, or next year's con in order to nominate.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

The more non-slate voters there are, absent the 5% rule kicking in, the more people are needed to vote a slate to get it to dominate the finalists list.
Each year's Worldcon includes around 1/3 of the membership who (almost) always attend; 1/3 who attend regularly (1-3 out of 5, say) and 1/3 who only attend local worldcons or for whom this is their first worldcon. The number of people who nominate has been rapidly increasing in recent years. Now, without doing some intrusive surveillance of who votes we don't have information on who the new nominators are, amongst those groups, but the supporting members who nominate are often in the second or third groups. These people are not voting according to slates - they are mostly voting their own interests. But, asssumign their interests are broadly the same as the non-regulars for the other years and as the regulars, then the higher nominator numbers overall mean that the slate voters have to get more people to vote the slate to run the board than they do if there are fewer overall nominators.
Let me put some hypothetical (and not representative numbers) to show this. Remember that the regulars don't get to nominate multiple times, only once, and that we assume that most members aren't voting "slate" suggestions:

N-1 only nominators: 200
N only nominators: 200
N+1 only nominators (1): 100

Regular attendee nominators: 200

Total non-slate nominators: 700
(1) Not that many people join their "local" worldcon in time to nominate the previous year, eighteen months before their local worldconn.

If there are, say, 35 novels getting a flattish bell curve (2) of nominations from these nominators then the five most popular of these novels (remember, each nominator gets five nominations) gets perhaps between 50 and 100 nominations each.

To run a slate which dominates or completely runs the finalists board, this means you only need 100 people to join and vote the slate (assuming you don't persuade any of the pre-existing nominators to vote your slate).

(2) that's what the nominations list typically looks like.

If we remove the N-1 and N+1 voters, then we only have 400 nominators instead of 700. Now, the most popular of their nominees gets 30-45 assuming a similar spread of opinion. Yes, perhaps the slate voters don't need to spend more money each year, only joining one year in three, but you only need 45 of them to dominate the finalist list, instead of 100.

These numbers are absolutely not representative, and include lots of assumptions, but it's representative of the analysis that most people who dislike the effect of the Rabid Puppies slate promotion have done and believe is what happened. Unless you accept the "sekrit slate" argument put forth by the SP/RP people, then these representative numbers show what's just happened, to a vague approximation.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. I'd like to see real info about nominator breakdowns, e.g. Who's supporting v. attending, and who's this year v. next or last.

I wouldn't propose anything serious without that.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

So far as I'm aware we don't collect that information. It's work enough as it is to try to ensure that every person who nominates only gets one nomination. Even ignoring people trying to be on the system multiple times, sometimes names are subtly different from year to year, people change their names (on marriage, divorce, being widowed, being adopted, on a whim) etc. While most are honest and would raise the question, perhaps some would take advantage of two PINS being issued, particularly if they hadn't read the rules clearly and didn't realise they shouldn't. Asking the Hugo admin team to gather such data as well (which would need great care in gathering, processing and making the results available) as well, would be too much to ask. When the multi-year nomination proposals were debated, the workload was one of the major concerns expressed.
But, the above analysis means to me that we shouldn't change the status quo in this way (removing multi-year nomination rights) as a response to the slate voting issue.

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I probably assumed that was more available than it actually was. It doesn't surprise me that it's not.

[soon_lee]

The number of people who nominate has been rapidly increasing in recent years.

I am concerned about unintended consequences. More nominations did actually lead to a pretty decent final ballot last year (SPs not withstanding). So I'm wary of changing the electorate. Also for purely selfish reasons, I'm in the category who has only attended a local Worldcon, so restricting nominating & voting to attending members would cut me out.

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

This may have been a threshold effect, though. Yes, we had an increase in interest in Worldcon and the Hugos by people both of goodwill towards them and a shared community idea with the existing membership of Worldcon. However, the efforts to give the Hugos wider attention, or rather to give their nominating and voting process a wider attention, may well have produced the current situation. Of course, this may just be that the push for greater awareness coincided with the rise of social media and the final appearence of someone who felt slighted by the Worldcon attendees, and was a right wing entitled ass who decided that he'd try to game them into fitting with his worldview.
My feeling is that fixing the nominating process so that a single slate cannot dominate the finalists list (4 slots per nominator and 6 or 7 finalists should be sufficient) is enough of a fix for the particulra problem we face and as I said on GRRM's "Not a Blog", all systems have failure modes. Fixes should be restricted to the minimal response to fix the failure you can see (while maintaining general robustness and avoiding tendencies to hard-to-detect failure modes).
For all of these reasons, I'm in favour of the "fewer individual nomination slots, more finalists" suggestion. It also fits nicely with something I wanted to do anyway, which was increase the number of "Short Story" slots to ten because we have lots of short stories and lots of outlets and I think we're not seeing a good representation of the "best" on the finalists list each year.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The real problem has been the Short Story classes for a while, because, the reality is a wide pool PLUS lots of short stories PLUS lots of different places EQUALS many many stories with few nominations.

I suspect it might be enough mind you. It will also make it harder for the various slates too.

[soon_lee]

Bigger brains than mine have been discussing voting systems in the thread Kevin linked in the top post. It has moved on to Discussing Specific Changes to the Hugo Nomination Election which is well worth a read.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Having some battle scars from the Blogger Skirmishes that were the Archduke Ferdinand moment of this current mess, there is a part of me in the increase costs camp. Thinking over some of the arguments with Jonathon McChalmont and others he/they wanted more people voting because they saw the Hugo's as too boring and traditional... Well. Be careful what you wish for etc...

There is another part of me that is interested in waiting and seeing. The puppies will fracture, it's already happening as Beale takes over and while Beale has been able to mass his flying monkeys this year, I suspect the Voting system will confuse them (without a fairly obvious voting slate - which would piss people on the puppy side off)... No actual outcome, it's cost them money, and Ann Leckie still has the Hugo...

Finally, I'm less sure a wider electorate helps because most people don't nominate... I read 2 eligible novels last year and no shorts or similar... A wider electorate suggests competing slates which will make getting on the slate more important and have a negative effect.

Given all that, I'd wait and see and then, if it's still a problem, I'd opt for limiting the pool through some tie to having attended previously or currently.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Of course, we could limit nominations to attending members only and allow anyone to vote :)

[(Anonymous)]

Kevin,

Just a note on whether or not you are "branded" or not. Both the Sad and Rabid Puppies are very much aware of the wise counsel that Schneier has been providing. We probably read Making Light more closely than most. Vox Day has indicated that there is a victory condition in place for the Sad and Rabids that pretty much leaves the existing state of the Hugos intact and potentially healthier going forward.

Furthermore, there are specific criteria unique to SJWs that they must place on themselves in order to qualify for such a badge, and you simply aren't in that category. A particular trait, for example, is pathological lying, even when it doesn't benefit the liar in any way.

Thus, you aren't branded, and although the SPs and RPs are many and are individuals (thus do not think as a bloc) I think it is safe to say that objectively, no collective irons are coming your way!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Eh? So the 'SPs and RPs are many and are individuals (thus do not think as a bloc)' and yet need a slate in order to vote as a bloc?

Ummmm... ok, sure....

[daveon.livejournal.com]

You are John C Wright and I claim my five pounds!

:p

[andrew barton (from livejournal.com)]

One variant I like is allowing nominations/votes to attending members, and supporting members who have attended any past Worldcon.

A snag is that in reality the rule would be 'have bought an attending membership' not 'attended', because I doubt there's any easy way to check whether someone who bought an attending membership for a past Worldcon actually showed up.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Administration of such a rule would be a nightmare. We don't know who attended past Worldcons. Someone could come along and claim attendance at (say) the 1973 Worldcon at the door and says "gimme a supporting membership, you can't prove I didn't attend." Because every Worldcon is a legally separate entity, sharing information between them is often difficult. Sometimes there's a case to be made that it's actually illegal (i.e. the UK Data Protection Act), although I've always contended that inasmuch as some limited data sharing between adjacent Worldcons is required by the WSFS Constitution, such sharing was part of the license agreement under which the convention got the rights to the event, and no member (legally, not practically) should be considered to be unaware that his/her details could be shared with an adjacent Worldcon. (IANAL)

As a practical matter, I think any proposal to require past attendance would have to be in the form of, "Must have attended a Worldcon in the past N years," and such a requirement wouldn't go into effect until N years after it was ratified. That would give the intervening Worldcons time to set up the necessary mechanisms to administer the requirement.

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

I've attended at least the last 3 world conventions. I'm going to miss Sasquan though I have a supporting membership.

I don't know what your retirement fund looks like, but mine is going to limit attendance somewhat. Remember the core is graying terribly -- the scooter and the cane were the major accessories at LoneStarCon. Start requiring attendance and the ability to nominate and vote may be losing its historical perspective, if nothing else.

Site selection provides seed money for the winning WorldCon -- making its revenue $5,000 rather than $40,000 doesn't seem like a genius idea. It would take 8 fans @5.00 to make up for one current presupporter. A nominate/vote only at a lower price -- missing the e-publications? So? The amount would have to be high enough to make it worth keeping up the mailing list and specific things for that population. It would really have to be quite a bit higher than $5, that's for sure.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I am not certain, but I think that most of the $5 HNO memberships I've heard proposed were phrased as:

• Hugo Nominating Only (not final ballot, not site selection, not Business Meeting proposal submissions)


• No convention publications at all. (Aside what you download on your own, but that doesn't require a membership at all


• No Hugo Voter Packet (assuming Worldcons don't throw up their hands in disgust and stop producing them entirely)


• Electronic voting only (no paper ballot)

I think the idea is that the HNO membership is perceived to cost the convention nothing at all. It might have zero marginal monetary cost, but there are people point (volunteer time) administrative costs.

I'm frustrated at hearing people talking about how Worldcons are "raking it in" with all of these supporting memberships. Supporting memberships cost money to administer as well. They are not pure profit the way people seem to think them to be.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Sasquan might turn out to be a particularly weird convention in that it will end up with so many supporting memberships they didn't budget for.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That is true, but it's less of a total impact than you might think. If, for instance, there is such a huge surge in Business Meeting attendance, we could be forced up to a facility whose marginal costs are nearly as much as the extra revenue from those supporting memberships. (We're currently in a room with capacity for 400 that can be doubled in a pinch by taking town the air-wall, which costs money, but not as much as using the main theatre.)

[redmorlock.livejournal.com]

People keep saying non-fans are responsible for the current ballot, but when I looked at the numbers, I didn't see evidence for that. It looks to me more like two groups of conservative fans organized. Have I missed something you can link to?

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There are allegations that "outside agitators" were "invited in" to this intramural dispute by at least one faction (there are at least two) in the Puppy movement.

[redmorlock.livejournal.com]

Got a link? Or something more specific that I could google? I looked at the numbers here:

http://shetterly.blogspot.com/2015/04/two-more-essential-points-about-hugos.html

So I'm curious about the faction making the allegations.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

There may have been millions of words spilled on this in the past week. I'd rather not get too much into specifics because frankly I don't want to deal with any more Wreckers than I have to. For one of the more comprehensive discussions from a passionate defender of Worldcon and the Hugo Awards, see grrm starting here and the following posts. Allow lots of time especially if you want to read the comments. (And because they're moderated, you probably do want to read the comments.)

A very specific allegation is here. There are lots of counter-arguments. You can also try reading Mike Glyer's File 770 news blog, which has been trying to accumulate quotes daily for the past week or so and has had a lot of debate and discussion as well.

[redmorlock.livejournal.com]

I have been following GRRM and File 770. I see many allegations and nothing but suspicion to support them—the rate of change in the numbers really doesn't require outsiders to explain it. But you're right that I should dig through Making Light and see if anyone offers anything substantive there. Thanks for the links!

[timill]

Another option which would require no Constitutional amendment would be for MAC2 not to offer online nominating - paper only.

[(Anonymous)]

I was probably open to low-cost HNO in the past, but PuppyGate (LOL) has made me rethink that. Certainly not to the $5 thing. (I'm not sure how HNO squares with the "keep us together proposal from recent years - uh, I forget if that passed or is up for passage this year.)

Something you don't mention above, which I saw elsewhere and I feel is worth considering, is the idea of attending members having a "bigger voice" than supporting. I don't want attending-only-can-vote - but weighing attending more than supporting seems reasonable, and I write this as someone who has supported a couple of times in the past, is supporting this year (recently purchased ;-), and I will probably support more often in the future than I have in the past. And I'd be okay with my nominations and votes counting, but counting less, when I'm a supporting member. (I know some folks hate this concept; look, IMHO it's worth considering, even if it doesn't go anywhere.)

Anyway, thanks for your reasoned and reasonable posts about the Hugos & WSFS.

Kendall

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

One of the items of Business Passed On for final ratification this year is WSFS Membership Types and Rates, which would prohibit Worldcons for charging less for any membership class that included any WSFS voting right for less that the cost of the ASM/Voting Fee charged in that Worldcon's site selection. If ratified this year, it first takes effect with next year's Worldcon. For example, if ratified, the 2016 Worldcon could not sell an HNO membership for less than $40, the amount charged in their site selection election. (MAC2 currently charges $50 for a supporting membership.) In the short run, anyone who wants Worldcons to sell an HNO membership would want to defeat this ratification; doing so would permit Worldcon to continue to decide what voting rights to provide to any level of membership and price.

Proposals to give Attending members' votes additional weight (a la the Locus Awards Poll giving subscribers' votes double weight) aren't exactly on the spectrum of changes I address above. I suspect that it would be easier to administer giving Attending members more nomination slots than Supporting. For example, Supporting members could be allowed two or three nominations per category and Attending members could be allowed four or five. (I'm vague about specifics because of how it might interact with "4/6," mentioned above.

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for the WSFS Membership Types and Rates recap - that's the one I was thinking of.

Different # of nomination slots - oh, interesting! Yeah I could get behind that, as well, perhaps. Food for thought, definitely.

Kendall

[delosharriman]

I have a completely different, & not necessarily workable, proposal for changing the electorate — which is not a response to the Present Mess, but something I have had floating around for some time now, & if people are really interested in changing the rules, then I mean to offer it.

It works out to "expanding WSFS membership to members of national & regional SF fandom conventions on a double opt-in basis", ie, the Worldcon committe (or probably a standing committee with similar makeup to the MPC) extends the invitation to the convention, & if the con opts in, then each member has the option. This would, or so I like to think, have the effect of changing size without changing composition.