The Hugo Voting Cost Motion

~ Cheryl

From Kevin’s LiveJournal I see that SMOFdom has moved on the subject of Hugo voting costs. Reading the motion I find myself in two minds. On the one hand it is an admirable attempt to rein in the apparent tendency of Worldcons to inflate supporting membership costs because they deem the demand for them to be inelastic. Certainly the sort of prices we are seeing these days for supporting memberships are well beyond what is necessary to service those memberships. On the other hand, the motion also seeks to tie voting rights firmly into the current concept of supporting memberships (so that a separate voting membership cannot be offered) and to make it difficult for any Worldcon to reduce the current high cost of voting. I think, on balance, I’m voting against the motion as it currently stands.

We’ve put a poll up on SFAW.

2 thoughts on “The Hugo Voting Cost Motion”

  1. As far as I can tell, there’s pretty firm thinking from a lot of SMOFdom (which includes the people who would have to make the operational decision to offer a Hugo-voting-only membership) that the existing supporting membership as it stands is already the floor; that is, that Worldcon committees cannot offer a Hugo-voting-only membership on the authority of the existing wording. This line of reasoning says that it is implicit in the existing wording of the rules that supporting memberships are already the least-expensive class of membership that can be offered voting rights, and that it would take explicit action to authorize classes of membership that include any WSFS voting rights but cost less than a supporting membership. Under this interpretation, lowering the maximum supporting membership is the only way to get voting rights to be any cheaper.

    People who believe that Worldcons should be explicitly authorized to sell memberships that include some WSFS rights (in this case, Hugo nominating and/or voting) for less than the cost of a supporting membership may want to consider submitting a separate proposal making such authority explicit. This would allow the Business Meeting to debate the subject on the record and provide some sort of legislative guidance to furture Worldcons contemplating a Hugo-voting-only membership.

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