Hugo Awards Organizers Reveal Thousands Spent On Fraudulent Votes To Help One Writer Win

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy writing has revealed that almost 400 votes -- about 10% of all votes cast in this year's awards -- were fraudulently paid for to help one finalist win. The Hugo administration subcommittee, which tallies the votes for the annual awards, issued a statement on Monday saying that they had determined that 377 votes had been cast by individuals with "obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics." These included voters with almost identical surnames, with just one letter changed and placed in alphabetical order, and some whose names were "translations of consecutive numbers." The voting pattern was "startlingly and obviously different" to anything the members of the current Hugo administration subcommittee had ever seen, and most of the votes favored one finalist, who the subcommittee called "Finalist A." "We have no evidence that Finalist A was at all aware of the fraudulent votes being cast for them, let alone in any way responsible for the operation. We are therefore not identifying them," the subcommittee said. Only members of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) can nominate works for the Hugos and vote on finalists, which costs a minimum of 45 pounds each year. Based on the Hugo administration subcommittee's tally, paying for 377 memberships would have cost at least $22,000. The Hugo administration subcommittee said they received "a confidential report that at least one person had sponsored the purchase of WSFS memberships by large numbers of individuals, who were refunded the cost of membership after confirming that they had voted as the sponsor wished." The subcommittee said the finalist has not been disqualified but didn't win their category without the invalid votes. "We want to reassure 2024 Hugo voters that the ballots cast were counted fairly," their statement said. "Most of all, we want to assure the winners of this year's Hugos that they have won fair and square, without any arbitrary or unexplained exclusion of votes or nominees and without any possibility that their award had been gained through fraudulent means." In February, the Hugo awards came under fire over censorship accusations that it was excluding several authors at its event in China.

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