Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I think we're charging too much for those supporting memberships -- approximately twice what I think we should be.

It happens that I agree with this wholeheartedly. During site selection in 2001, we refused to allow the site selection voting fee/supporting rate to rise, as our competitors had insisted it should. Had it been possible, we would have insisted that it *decline.* And at no point after we won did we ever increase the supporting membership rate.

I have watched the rapid ascent of the rate with no little annoyance, and I would *happily* decouple the rate from the initial attending rate.

However, I do not believe that the rate should be viewed as the rate to vote in the Hugo Awards. Voting for the Hugos is one of the rights of a member of the Worldcon. If people aren't interested in Worldcon, I'm not interested in improving their ability to vote.