But they all got social security numbers on the same day.
John Valuk is dead he fell on his head.
Huh. Cordwainer Smith rises from the grave to tamper with Hugo voting.
If the fake ballots they caught were this obvious, how confident are we that there weren’t any that were less obvious and didn’t get caught?
I assume the vetting committee has worked hard to identify fakes and verify members about whom they may be any doubt.
But they are volunteers. Our mods do their best to identify trolls, too, but as time goes by they have an increasing amount of data to go on and a small number of trolls. The committee has one data point, the membership application, and many thousands of applications.
I wouldn’t be surprised if many more than 377 ballots are from the fakers. I would be surprised if anybody knew the number or there were reasonable ways to find out.
I’m not going to go so far as to say the results will be irredeemably tainted. Or that China - which has a growing authentic fandom to go with a growing authentic base of writers - should be automatically suspect. Attempts to sway the Hugo balloting go way back, and yet the awards go on. The bottom line is that it’s just a bunch of fans having fun - the Hugo has no commercial value. Ignore the meanies and let the kids play.
If you’re worried, buy a voting membership and vote. That’s one more valid vote. Encourage others to sign up and vote. The more valid votes there are, the less effect invalid votes will have.