31
votes
Hugo voting data from Chengdu WorldCon raises suspicions of vote tampering and incorrect eligibility rulings
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have finally been released - and we have questions
- Authors
- Cora
- Published
- Jan 21 2024
- Word count
- 3702 words
This blog post has a nicely curated set of links but a brief summary is that WorldCon is a SF fan con that also hosts the Hugo Awards every year. Attendees get to vote, as do people who pay for a voting membership. In 2023 the con was held in Chengdu, China and the voting data was just released, leading to questions about why Babel by R F Kuang was ruled ineligible (typically reasons would include being published previously or the nominated work being in the wrong category), as were a Sandman episode, a fan writer and several Chinese works.
Additionally the vote counting system, EPH (E Pluribus Hugo), which uses a form of ranked choice, shows odd patterns where Babel did not get any votes from ballots where it was lower ranked, and some works have more votes than voters.
The Hugo's had issues with the "puppies" incident which is too much to explain here but File 770 or r/hobbydrama will certainly have a write up. shortest possible version is slate voting was used to manipulate the finalists particularly as a response to the perceived "SJW-ification" of the Hugos, it mostly backfired but EPH was supposed to be a trustworthy way to limit that sort of manipulation.
There's a lot of suspicion that some of the suddenly "ineligible" works were targeted following pressure from the government for their creators or their likelihood of saying something politically unappealing during the awards. Xiran Jay Zhao, R F Kuang, and Neil Gaiman, two of those are Chinese American/Canadian, and Neil tends to show up and say what he wants when he wins.
The people in charge are saying nothing more than that a particular work was "determine to be ineligible in accordance with the constitution" or something along those lines.
The author of this post notes that while they worried about WorldCon being in China they very much thought that western fans had been awful to Chinese fans and wanted a more true "world" con. But also, Uganda has a bid in for a future con, and everyone feels incredibly uncomfortable with granting them the con, even before this.
I follow the Hugo's every year and try to read the short lists when I can. So I thought others might find this interesting.
It's good to know that instead of just a country that limits free expression (to put it lightly) and considers homosexuality to be a mental disorder, they could instead host it in a country that makes homosexuality a capital offense! Maybe Pasta Senpai will show up!
To be fair, I don't think that anyone wants it to be in Uganda. They are just currently the only bid for 2028. However, John Scalzi pointed out that quick turnarounds on new bids have happened in the past. I strongly suspect that it'll get picked up by an American or British city
I have to imagine they would just do it virtually instead of going to Uganda if it came down to it.
As a note, Australia now has a bid in for 2028
There's current talk of separating WorldCon and the Hugo Award comittee a bit more (and adding some accountability) so it'll also depend on that - WorldCon couldn't to Uganda and the Hugos could end up being separate.
Honestly shit happens and loosely run fan orgs are going to have faults but I'm very curious what would keep the head of the committee from admitting what happens if it was government pressure.
Unless he accepted $ or something and now he feels beholden.
I've just read Africa Risen and it's a good anthology of writing from the African diaspora. It'd be great to see a major con in an African nation.
But not Uganda.
Wikipedia says this:
And that's just LGBT human rights.
It's a terrible idea to host a culture convention in a jurisdiction whose laws prohibit free cultural expression. It would be like hosting a track and field event somewhere where you aren't allowed to throw things too hard or bend your knees while running.
I understand the impulse to making these events as global as possible so that people everywhere feel included—the science-fiction community certainly feels too western at times—but that can't come at the expense of being able to run them properly.
Leaked Emails: It was Censorship all along
A bit more complicated in that it's clear that American and Canadian admins reviewed western works for "concerns" and then whether due to self censorship (for fear of crossing a major legal line) or external pressure (government or business related) the works were removed. Neil Gaiman's Sandman is still unexplained. A number of Chinese works were allegedly dismissed due to slate voting but the non-Chinese admins didn't read them and have no actual idea if that's actually why.
This has led to the resignation of at least one person from the 2024 Hugo Committee. (Because the awards and WorldCon are independently run each year by locals there's not necessarily continuity though plenty of big names in the community hop along year to year)
It's really disappointing and yet not surprising at this point. But figured it'd put a bow on things.
This is anecdata somewhat tangential to the controversy over the Hugo vote.
From my perspective, the Chengdu Worldcon bid at Chicon 8 (2022 WorldCon) had creepy vibes right from the start.
China, Sichuan province, and particularly Chengdu were all completely locked down at the time due to the massive COVID-19 case surge. Yet the Chengdu WorldCon bid seemed lavishly funded and professionally produced, by comparison with the fannishly amateur Winnipeg bid. [Brief vlog of the Chengdu bid highlights here]
Most of the WorldCon bids I've seen over the years, particularly for bids from outside the host country, have had limitations due to the costs of getting the bid team and gear to the host venue, borne at the expense of the regional fandom. By contrast, the booth swag for Chengdu consisted of mountains of large stuffed toys, full color posters, enameled pins, and other relatively expensively produced giveaways.
There was a business-suited videography team following members of the carefully made-up and styled Chengdu bid group around the convention center and into some of the parties. In my experience, it seemed far more like a big corporate sales and marketing effort at a professional conference, than a fan-centric attempt to host a WorldCon. Maybe you had to be there, but the Chengdu bid production seemed abrasively tone-deaf and artificial in context, and I wasn't the only one to remark on this.
I don't have the Mandarin language skills to delve further into the backstory on the Chengdu bid, its sponsorship, and how deeply the government is involved in promoting Chinese science fiction. I'd be interested if some of my fellow Tildees might be helpful here.
Edit: In all fairness, the Chengdu bid planning was in the works long before COVID-19 and the worst political crackdowns. The original Chengdu bid video looks like something a local Chamber of Commerce would help produce for a U.S. tourism destination, and I would certainly have been interested under other circumstances.
My Mandarin isn't good enough to do the deep dive you're asking for, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the tampering was due to more personal corruption on the part of the team running the con. It seems clear from the data that there were at least two independent attempts to manipulate the final ballots, and iirc a Chinese author noted that the finalists were overwhelmingly published by two specific Chinese publishing houses. just to add some further complexity to the picture lol.
I think it looks like the publishing houses put out nomination lists which could have absolutely led to more innocent slate like voting but I have not followed that as well to tell if that's what was going on.
Either everything is wrong with these numbers due to manipulation or it's the worst example of poor record keeping .... But it's probably both.
Yeah I think it's hard to 100% identify exactly what happened in part because we don't have the raw stats either, it's just that the manipulation was so sloppy that it's still obvious something happened.
I definitely have read of concerns about the bid materials but that's more specific information than I'd seen!
As an aside this whole thing led to a hilarious bluesky conversation about giving the Hugo trophies handjobs.
https://bsky.app/profile/wendyzski.bsky.social/post/3kjjswonyuq2e
Some additional blog posts and such in the days since:
Perhaps it's not a complicated conspiracy but a complicated "stuff-up"
Wherein even Neil Gaiman cannot get an answer
Proposed Next Steps