The Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administration Subcommittee has disqualified 377 votes after finding evidence that the submitted ballots were fraudulent.
“A large number of votes in 2024 were cast by accounts which fail to meet the criteria of being ‘natural persons,’ with obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics,” the Glasgow 2024 Astounding, Lodestar, and Hugo Administrator, Nicholas Whyte said in a statement. “These included, for instance, a run of voters whose second names were identical except that the first letter was changed, in alphabetical order; and a run of voters whose names were translations of consecutive numbers.”
The statement also shared that the committee “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.”
Because of these findings, Worldcon removed 377 votes out of the 3,813 final ballots they received.
The reportedly fraudulent votes tended to favor one finalist, who Worldcon is declining to name because they have no evidence that this person is aware this effort was done on their apparent behalf. Worldcon did share that after the removal of the fraudulent votes, that finalist did not win in their respective category.
“We believe that it is important for transparency that we inform you now about what has happened,” the statement continued. “We want to reassure 2024 Hugo voters that the ballots cast were counted fairly. 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.”
This news comes after the Chengdu 2023 Worldcon Hugo administrators were censured for listing certain finalists, such as R.F. Kuang’s Babel, as “not eligible” without explanation.
The full voting results, nominating statistics, and voting statistics will still be published immediately after the Hugo Awards ceremony on August 11, 2024, but will not include the fraudulent votes in the data.
Here is a video from Whyte announcing the news.
