Hugo Awards: 3-Stage Voting

[This post is entirely my own personal opinion. I do not speak for any other group of which I may be a member. In particular, this post is not the official opinion of the World Science Fiction Society, WSFS Mark Protection Committee, the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee, Worldcon Intellectual Property, or any Worldcon committee. I am not in a management position for the 2016 WSFS Business Meeting, although I'm a staff member (assistant videographer). I don't speak for the WSFS Business Meeting, either. This is my own opinion. Anyone trying to claim otherwise by pointing at this message is explicitly rejected by the plain meaning of my own words. I am allowed to have a personal opinion that may vary from any official opinions of groups of which I am a member.]


2015 Hugo Award Trophy, designed by Matthew Dockrey

In light of this year's Hugo Award shortlist and the attendant furor therein, the discussion on how to "repair" the voting system has once again arisen. Some people are incensed that things haven't been fixed already, because they heard something passed last year, and they either do not know or do not care that all changes to WSFS rules require passage in two consecutive years. (I had someone contact me last year asking for the "Special Secret Emergency SMOF rules for changing things in one year." He was very disappointed to hear that there are no such rules. In fact, our rules are deliberately designed to derail those who would insist that we must Change Everything Right Now because it's an Emergency.) In any event, two proposals are up for ratification at the 2016 WSFS Business Meeting to modify the Hugo Awards nomination process: E Pluribus Hugo (replace the first-five-nominees-past-the-post system currently in use with a system that uses math to reduce the ability of closely correlated ballots to dominate the process so that less than 20% of the electorate can collect nearly 100% of the finalist slots) and 4/6 (limit members to four nominations per category and increase the number of shortlist slots in each category to six). The two proposals are not directly in opposition: either, neither, or both of them could be ratified at this year's Business Meeting. Those proposals that are ratified this year will first take effect with the 2017 Hugo Awards (generally for works first published in 2016) administered by Worldcon 75 in Helsinki.

I do not wish to rehash the arguments for and against either EPH or 4/6 here. However, I would like to set out a plan that I've been thinking about (and have talked about) since this series of bad actors imposed their minority opinion on the majority of the members of WSFS last year. It's a completely different change than either EPH or 4/6, and actually leaves the current nominating and final ballot phases of the Hugo Awards unchanged, but instead inserts an additional stage into the selection process that gives the membership of the current Worldcon an opportunity to weigh in on whether they think any particular finalist deserves to be on the ballot without having to resort to the rather blunt instrument of voting No Award.

( Key Points of 3-Stage Voting )

Now let's unpack the details of how this would work, because there are a lot of them, and they interact in ways that you might not expect and that I think actually improve the overall process in many ways.

( The Devil can be in the Details )

Benefits of 3-Stage Voting:

• Relatively easy to explain (vote yes/no on each semi-finalist)


• Final Ballot will reflect the majority opinion of the members of the current Worldcon that the finalists deserve to be on the ballot


• Administrators will have the help of the public in checking eligibility and contacting potential finalists


• Finalists will be unable to leak results prior to the announcement of the Final Ballot


• Relatively small minorities will not be able to dominate the shortlist


• No Award is unlikely to win a category


• Does not require a Strong Administrator to subjectively decide whether a nominee is "legitimate" because the decision can be submitted to the membership as a whole

Drawbacks of 3-Stage Voting:

• Increased workload for the Hugo Award Administrator (3x Semi-Finalists versus today's Finalists)


• Increased expense and workload for Current Worldcon (an extra ballot mailing and work to administer voting)


• Potential for campaigning against Semi-Finalists


• Need to explain to members that the yes/no decision is about whether the semi-finalist is worthy of the honor, not just "Did I personally like it."


• Potential for categories being dropped due to >12 semi-finalists being disqualified


• Shorter period for Final Ballot voting, and a tighter schedule overall

I think the benefits of 3-Stage Voting system outweigh the disadvantages. I also think that it's more practical to conduct a 3-Stage election now that all but a handful of members are voting electronically.

Will I propose such a system this year? I do not currently expect to do so. There is already a crowded agenda with the Business Passed On from last year, including contentious and complicated proposals such as E Pluribus Hugo. Introducing this proposal would muddy the waters by leading people to vote against proposals that may improve the current system and would not require an additional round of voting. Should anything get ratified this year, we really need to let it run for a year or three just to see how it works in practice. And furthermore, I'm Chair of the 2017 WSFS Business Meeting in Helsinki. Were this proposal to be introduced and pass this year, I would be honor-bound to recuse myself from the Chair again next year when it came up for a ratification vote (as I did with Popular Ratification in Spokane), and I'd prefer to not have to do so. So at the moment, the earliest I could see introducing 3-Stage Voting would be 2018, and I'm not even sure about that.

I reserve the right to modify this proposal or change my mind about introducing it based on developments as time goes by. Changing my mind is not "flip-flopping," but is sensibly re-evaluating a situation in light of new information.