Hugo awards organisers reveal thousands spent on fraudulent votes to help one writer win | Hugo awards | The Guardian

The prestigious Hugo awards for science fiction and fantasy writing has revealed that almost 400 votes - about 10% of all votes cast in this year's awards - were fraudulently paid for to help one finalist win.

The Hugo administration subcommittee, which tallies the votes for the annual awards, issued a statement on Monday saying that they had determined that 377 votes had been cast by individuals with "obvious fake names and/or other disqualifying characteristics".

These included voters with almost identical surnames, with just one letter changed and placed in alphabetical order, and some whose names were "translations of consecutive numbers".

The voting pattern was "startlingly and obviously different" to anything the members of the current Hugo adminstration subcommittee had ever seen, and most of the votes favoured one finalist, who the subcommittee called "Finalist A".