Interview with a Ballot Stuffer
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Interview with a Ballot Stuffer |
| Interviewer: | CiCi Lean |
| Interviewee: | Elysavets |
| Date(s): | October 1998 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | The X-Files |
| External Links: | THE ACID DESK: Vol 1, No. 5, Archived version, scroll to the bottom |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Interview with a Ballot Stuffer was a 1998 interview with a fan who stuffed the ballots in the 1996 Spooky Awards.
The interview was published in an issue of The Acid Desk.
Introduction
The scene: The 1996 ATXC Spooky Awards run by author and archivist, Stef Davies.
The scandal: During the final ballot counting, Stef notices a surprising number of closely timed votes, all clamoring for stories that were nominated, but up to that point, hadn't even been in the running for top honors. She immediately gets suspicious, quietly investigates, and soon, her worst fears are confirmed.
We had a ballot stuffer on our hands.
Using the endless multiple screenames that AOL gives you with membership, the stuffer had, one evening, decided to sway the awards to their liking. Stef never let us know *who* had done the deed, and she quietly disqualified the votes, while warning all of us, not to do it again. Now, even -I-, Miss Know-It-All, have wondered for the past two years who exactly was it who did the deed. Then, last month, to my great shock and surprise, and completely by accident, I found out.
When Elysavets IM'd me out of the blue one morning, I was skeptical, but after a bit of fact-checking, I realized that she indeed was the Infamous One. After a few days of talking, she agreed to be interviewed for the Acid Desk, and so, below, please find...
Excerpts
CL: Well, I suppose the first question that's on everybody's mind is -- why? Why did you do it?
EL: Well, I guess I have to answer two different things. I thought that the idea of fanfic awards was pretty neat to begin with. But the more I looked at the nominations, the more I realized that it really had nothing to do with who the best writers were. It had to do with who wrote the most popular stuff. And the more I looked at that, the more I realized that the writers who were writing fan fantasies were really going to win, instead of the best writers. So, one night, my husband and I had some friends over, and I confessed my secret fanfic addiction and told them about the awards. We'd all had a few drinks, and were feeling sort of playful and I logged in and showed them the ballots. I don't remember who suggested it, but it might have been me, I admit it; anyway, we started voting and I created a screen name for each of our guests and advised them on what I'd vote, with various differences. I had to describe each story, since there certainly wasn't time for them to read them, and they'd tell me which one to vote for and so on. Once we got rolling, we just kept on rolling, and we used the most awful screennames imaginable. I think ultimately, we voted about forty or fifty times. I'm not positive, we were all a little tipsy by then, and laughing hysterically. The guys were competing for the most smarmy screen names and the girls were right behind them. Toward the end, we were voting strictly by writers who weren't like total raves in the newsgroup, but who wrote decently.
CL: Just to be the Devil's advocate, what is wrong with the most popular stories winning over the ones that are supposedly better quality? Aren't awards supposed to be a "will of the people"?
E: Oh, there's nothing wrong with that, but call it what it is. If it's a most popular story contest, don't call it best story for each category, call it most popular story for each category. If it's a contest for quality, then you need to not rely on popular vote, but maybe some independent judges to judge the writing quality.
If tons of people like Jackie Collins and say that she's the best writer in the world, it doesn't mean she IS! [LOL]
CL: Did you vote for yourself?
E: God, no! I don't post fanfic! I write it for my own private pleasure. And my husband's. [g]
CL: Last question. Do you have any regrets?
E: Well, sometimes. I feel bad that Stef Davies was upset.
And I feel bad that what we did technically was very dishonest.
The entire awards process seems like nothing more a popularity contest to me. It doesn't matter how good you are or how original or unique the plot is. The winners always seem to be writing the same old plot, and most of them are romances. So the non-romances fall completely out of the loop. Look at your stuff, I love your stuff, but has Wonderland ever won an award? But the dumbest of romances can win. If you want to have a popularity contest, call it a popularity contest. If it's a quality contest, let's call it a quality contest. Otherwise, people who are really good, but who don't have the following for slurpee stories--they never get the chance to win.
The only other regret I have is that one of the worst, yet apparently most popular fanfic writers (IMHO) won over better writers. I guess I also have to admit that I regret the fact we got caught. I don't know that forty or fifty votes would have turned the award to another writer, but I sometimes think it might have.