1980 Worldcon Site Selection
Site Selection for the 1980 Worldcon was conducted by Iguanacon, the 1978 Worldcon. The bidders were Boston in 1980, Baltimore in '80 and a Flushing in '80 hoax bid. Boston won, and went on to run Noreascon Two.
The Iguanacon committee was very idiosyncratic in their release of voting totals. To start with, Bob Hillis (the site selection administrator) announced at the Preliminary Business Meeting that he and representatives from the bids had counted the ballots which were overwhelmingly in Flushing's favor. Flushing, however, had failed to do its bid filing correctly (it had not supplied its committee rules) and had been disqualified. (More uproarious Business Meeting humor: This was not actually a rule, yet, and only became part of the WSFS Constitution following Iggy.) Upon redistributing Flushing's votes, Boston was declared the winner.
At the Business meeting following day, Hillis, announced that this was incorrect and that had actually received fewer than 60 votes.
The revised (and less amusing) version of the report had 1160 ballots received of which 1030 were valid. This is a very large number of invalid ballots. Since many of the invalid ballots were invalid because of a missing $5 voting fee, it was suspected that Iguanacon's mailing handling had separated the cash or checks from the ballots without noting that they had been paid. Additionally, the site selection ballot neglected to mention that one was required. This was a record year for invalid ballots.
Regardless, the bid representatives looked through the remaining 1030 ballots and it was obvious that Boston had won by a very large margin and no official count was made. Here is what was released:
| Bidder | At-con | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boston in 1980 or Baltimore in '80 | 379 | 584 | 963 |
| Flushing in '80 | 40 | 21 | 61 |
| invalid | 125 | 5 | 130 |
| Total | 544 | 610 | 1154 |
The Grenoble in 1980 and Stockholm in 1980 bids folded without filing.
| 1979 | Worldcon Site Selection | 1981 | 1980 |
| 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. |
