1996 Worldcon Site Selection
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Site Selection for the 1996 Worldcon was conducted by ConFrancisco in 1993; George Brickner was the Administrator. The only filing bidder was LA in '96, so it went on to run L.A.Con III.
| Bidder | By Mail | At the Door | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| LA in '96 | 206 | 926 | 1132 |
| Write-ins: | |||
| Hawaii | 1 | 18 | 19 |
| Minneapolis in '73 | – | 3 | 3 |
| I-6 in '96 | – | 2 | 2 |
| "La-la Land" | – | 2 | 2 |
| (1 each?) Rottnest Island; W.A.; Prudhoe Bay, AK; Hold Over Funds; Timbuktu; R'lyeh in '96; Ougadogou;[1] Reykjuvik (sic), Iceland; L-5 in '95; Spuzzum, B.C. | 1 | 10 | 11 |
| Illegal (or invalid?) | 1 | – | 1 |
| None of the Above | 11 | 50 | 61 |
| Total Expressing a Preference | 220 | 1011 | 1231 |
| No Preference/Blank | 12 | 43 | 55 |
| Total Ballots Cast | 232 | 1054 | 1286 |
| Needed to Elect (Majority of Ballots Expressing a Preference): | 616 | ||
- ↑ The proper spelling of Burkina Faso's capital is Ouagadougou, but as this was 5 years before the city was popularised in Harry Potter, there was no "sic" unlike the better-known Reykjavik.
The "Shocking Unofficial Site Selection Results: LA Wins!" ("Site selection results are not official until received by the WSFS business meeting, which will be noon Sunday") were published in The Norton Reader Issue #7, Sunday Morning, September 5 (27 MB PDF, page 13). The article was not as detailed as the table above, especially not specifying which of the single votes was by mail.
This was added in the Business Meeting Minutes (250 kB pages 20–1), which were the original source of the table, but there were other problems still:
- The article says "One vote was illegal or invalid." while the row is called "Illegal Ballots" in the minutes, but this is likely just a minor variation of terminology.
- The Minutes lack 3 on-site votes for Minneapolis; as this would lead to the lower (sub)sum of 1008 only and they were reported in the con newsletter, clearly this is a later mistaken ommission rather than a silent correction of the earlier error.
- Even so and most importantly, the unique humorous write-ins are only 10 altogether, even taking Rottnest Island and "W. A." (Western Australia?) as two separate votes: in the newsletter, these were separated by semicolon as all votes were, while the state (abbreviation) followed the place after a comma; the minutes use only space before the state and commas between options, and both are consistent in this. Various possible explanations how the discrepancy might have come to be are left as an exercise for the reader (also, how can an invalid vote express preference?); but as there was no real contest, "It took approximately three hours to count the ballots" and the LA bid "graciously waived the requirement of validating the site selection ballots", it seems extremely unlikely that anyone would have noticed it and found the reason later back when it was still possible.
| 1995 | Worldcon Site Selection | 1997 | 1996 |
| This is page about convention bidding, the competition and its outcome. Please extend it by adding information about who was bidding, and how the race went. |
