Votes cast in the 2024 Hugo Awards have been rejected after they were discovered to have been made fraudulently by the committee behind the competition.

The prestigious awards, which have been running for 71 years, celebrate the best of science fiction and fantasy works over the previous 12 months and include the best novel of the year, best series and best short story among others.

The awards are handed out by the World Science Fiction Society at the Worldcon event, which takes place in Glasgow this year between August 8 and 12 with the award ceremony on the 11.

Controversy arose during last year’s voting when it was discovered that some authors had been excluded from voting as part of Chinese government censorship. The convention had been held in Chengdu in China last year but now there are more issues with accusations of fraudulent votes.

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The Glasgow 2024 subcommittee who deal with the awards detected unusual data in voting and launched an investigation into the situation.

Only one vote per person is allowed and the constitution says that only natural persons may get involved. The organisation discovered that 377 votes were cast by fraudulent means and the majority of them favoured one finalist, who they have decided not to name as they have no evidence that they were behind the situation.

That number comes from a total vote of 3813 ballots, meaning almost 10% of the votes were cast in a dishonest manner.

The news of the voting issues was released by Hugo Awards administrator Nicholas Whyte and suggested that a large number of accounts failed to meet the criteria of a real person and had obvious fake names, including a run of voters who simply changed the first letter of their surname in alphabetical order, while others used consecutive numbers to make their profiles different.

The data was found to have been ‘startlingly and obviously different’ from any other finalist this year.

There was also reports made to the subcommittee that a sponsor had refunded the cost of membership to a number of WSFS members after they proved they had voted in favour of the finalist that had been requested by the individual behind it.

The statement from Mr Whyte said: “On the basis of the above evidence, we have concluded that at least 377 votes have been cast fraudulently, of a total of 3,813 final ballot votes that we received. We have therefore disqualified those 377 votes from the final vote tally. 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.

“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. 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.

“No other votes have been disallowed. The only votes disallowed are those which we have positively identified as not cast by natural persons.

“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 August 11th, 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, added: “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.”