John Bray: Created page with "Many physical conventions hold votes, for awards or at bidding sessions for follow-on conventions. Worldcon has an elaborate Business Meeting system to decide policy over..."

2021-12-25T09:11:10Z

Created page with "Many physical conventions hold votes, for awards or at bidding sessions for follow-on conventions. Worldcon has an elaborate Business Meeting system to decide policy over..."

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Many [[physical convention]]s hold votes, for awards or at bidding sessions for follow-on conventions. Worldcon has an elaborate Business Meeting system to decide policy over several years. Traditionally this has been done with paper ballot boxes or public shows of hands, only rarely have proxy or postal votes been allowed.

Bid sessions normally allow questions from the floor. For [[virtual convention]]s, some allow video questions to be raised using the same software as the presenters, others restrict it to written questions curated by the meeting chair, either using the video software's side channel or a different solution. Allowing someone else to voice your question has problems with loss of tone or paraphrasing, but can also dampen an emotive debate. [[Hybrid convention]]s suffer from the disconnect between virtual and physical audiences

[[Zoom]] allows voting, but its partial anonymity can lead to different outcomes to raising a hand in a public meeting.

Awards can be moved partially or fully online, there are many online polling services, [[WordPress]] addons or Google Forms, but they are more work than a box on a table.

There were big scandals at [[DisCon III]] where online voting numbers were released before the physical polls closed in an attempt to bring out the vote in the latter, and to redefine what was a valid vote during the election to exclude already cast votes from China. If holding a hybrid vote with an International dimension, ensure you understand cultural differences, lock down the system in advance and keep the process secret.

Its obviously much easier for the committee to decide policy without reference to their members, but if you do, you need to consult widely and slowly.

{{SeeAlso}}
[[Category:Virtual]]

Voting - Revision history

John Bray: Created page with "Many physical conventions hold votes, for awards or at bidding sessions for follow-on conventions. Worldcon has an elaborate Business Meeting system to decide policy over..."