Hugo awards disqualifies hundreds of 'fake votes' cast for finalist

The Hugo awards has announced it has disqualified hundreds of votes after it appeared they had been cast by fake accounts.

In the course of tallying the votes on the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, the Glasgow 2024 Hugo Administration team said they detected some "unusual data". 

It emerged that a large number of votes in 2024 were cast by accounts which didn’t meet the criteria of being "natural persons", with obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics used. These included 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. 

According to the awards, many of the votes were for the same person, who the Hugo awards have named only as "Finalist A".

This pattern of data is startlingly and obviously different from the votes for any other finalist in 2024, and indeed for any finalist in any of the previous years. The committee also revealed it 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.

Out of the 3,813 final ballot votes, 377 have been disqualified.

A spokesperson for the awards said: "This decision is not one made lightly, but we are duty bound as the Hugo Administrators to protect the Hugo Awards and to act against fraud."

There is "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".

The spokesperson added: "Finalist A has not been disqualified from the 2024 Hugo Awards. However, they do not win in their category, once the invalid votes have been disallowed."

The statement from the awards continued: "We recognise that after the Hugo voting in 2023, many in the community will, understandably, have questions about this. Unfortunately, our ability to answer is very limited, due to our responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the ballot and data protection regulations. There are proposals to institute a system of independent audit for Hugo votes. But at present such a system does not exist, therefore the raw 2024 voting data cannot and will not be shared outside the Glasgow 2024 Hugo team.

"However, the full voting results, nominating statistics, and voting statistics will be published immediately after the Hugo Awards ceremony on 11th August 2024 as previously agreed in our transparency statement. Those will not include the 377 votes which have been disallowed but will include the other 3,436 votes.

"We believe that it is important for transparency that we inform you now about what has happened. 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."

Professor Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Chair of Glasgow 2024, said: "I was dismayed to be told of the findings of the Astounding, Lodestar, and Hugo Awards Administration team, and absolutely support their decision to preserve the integrity of the awards through the actions that they have taken. These awards are a cornerstone of our convention and represent the pinnacle of achievement in our community. Glasgow 2024 remains committed to a policy of transparency, and we are excited to welcome everyone in August to a truly celebratory Hugo Awards ceremony.”