Recently, many of us have waited, with a baited breath, for the results of Hugo Awards voting. In the end, none of the nominees from the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies voting slates won any awards, which is a remarkable achievement, demonstrating that there is still enough strength and self-respect in the SFF fan audience to oppose attempts to subvert a free expression of the popular opinion. The fan have shown that they want their opinion to matter.
Nevertheless, I’m skeptical about the various proposals to amend the Hugo voting system in order to avoid or mitigate the effects of another set of voting slates being used in the future. Extrapolating (in the good SFF tradition) to the extreme, it’s pretty much as trying to devise a voting system for presidential elections that minimizes the influence of political parties and their election campaigns. Is it possible? Unlikely, to say the least. The only real way to compete with a political party in any popular vote situation is to create another political party.
Please note that I do NOT advocate creating counter-slates of any kind. But some ideological-platform-like opposition may eventually arise. Although it saddens me to see the rise of voting blocs in SFF fandom, I’m afraid this may become inevitable. Unless, that is, we move away from popular vote to a committee vote, as is the case for most, if not all, of the other literary awards.