Electronic Worldcon Site Selection Voting

Those of you on The List That Must Not Be Named already have had your fill of this, but not every Worldcon member who cares about Worldcon or whose opinion should count is on that list, despite the attitude of some of its members.

Voting for the Hugo Awards via web site was, not too many years ago, a rare and unusual thing, with most voters opting for the traditional paper ballot usually distributed through a convention progress report. Now, voting via the web site is apparently the most-common option for most voters, with fewer and fewer voters opting for traditional ballots. So why can't we cast our Worldcon site selection ballots the same way? It turns out that the following section of the WSFS constitution is the hold-up. ( Section 4.1: Voting )

Section 4.1.2 has been held to prohibit any form of electronic voting, because it specifically states "written ballot cast...by mail" and in this context, "mail" apparently excludes voting by web site or other electronic means of communication. The Hugo Award rules have different specific words that have been held to not prohibit e-voting.

Let us ignore the fact that faxed-in ballots have been accepted in the past; that apparently doesn't bother the people troubled by web-based voting. Also, the questions of how one deals with paying the Advance Supporting Membership (Voting) Fee are not actually in scope here; it seems reasonable to assume that a Worldcon wanting to do e-voting would figure out how to accept payments, and if they couldn't figure out how to do so, they simply wouldn't run e-voting.

Now I personally don't think this language actually prohibits electronic voting, but enough influential WSFS movers and shakers have stuck to this interpretation that it would call into question any Worldcon's attempt to do e-voting for site selection. And the major argument against my interpretation is that when the current wording was adopted in the late 1960s (morphing through a number of changes in the 1970s but retaining effectively the same intention), it was to allow people other than those who actually turned up at the WSFS Business Meeting to determine the site selection, and that "mail" means what it meant in 1968, and that it is wrong to re-interpret it to mean anything else, and that doing so is thwarting the will of members of WSFS as expressed through the Business Meeting.

Fair enough. If that's the case, then I think it's time to broaden the interpretation of what we mean by written ballot and mail. Because WSFS conducts multiple elections of different types, I think a general statement is preferable to trying to patch specific sections. General statements of this sort belong in Article 6, and I therefore intend to introduce the following WSFS constitutional amendment at Aussiecon 4. The amendment itself is short, but has a long commentary to clarify "legislative intent."

( Electronic Voting Amendment )

( More about potential opposition arguments )

If you are a member of Aussiecon 4, either attending or supporting, and would like to be listed as a co-sponsor of this proposal -- that is, you're willing to "second" it -- let me know and I will add your name. WSFS precedent has always allowed non-attending members to submit and sponsor proposals. If you're going to A4, I'd appreciate you attending the Business Meeting and voting for it, but you don't have to attend A4 or the BM to be a co-sponsor as long as you are a member of this year's Worldcon.

Edit, 13:00: I have corrected and will continue to correct typos that do not substantially change the meaning of this post without individually calling them out.

Edit, 9 Jun 16:00: As I want to go ahead and submit the proposal to the Business Meeting, I'm closing off further co-sponsors. Thank you to everyone who joined their names to the proposal.