2024 TAFF Race
In 2024 TAFF selected a North American to travel to the Glasgow 2024. The administrators were Mike Lowrey (US; 2020 winner) and Sandra Bond (UK, 2023 winner). The newsletter produced by Bond was Taffluorescence! – #1 November 2023; #2 January 2024; #3 April 4; #4 April 14.[1]
The race was declared on November 28, 2003, with nominations period from December 1 to January 7, after which two candidates were announceed, with following platforms and nominators:
- Vanessa Applegate: Vanessa Applegate has been around fandom for more than twenty years, mostly attending and occasionally running logistics for cons in Northern California. Mostly, she arts, has had art in various zines, co-edited The Drink Tank for a year, was nominated for the Hugo for her work on Journey Planet, and has been known to throw on a costume from time to time. Vanessa lives among the redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her husband, a pair of clingy cats, and two miniature fans-in-training. You will know her by her hair flowers!
— John Coxon, Alissa Wales (Europe); Francesca Myman, Dave O’Neill, Chuck Serface - Sarah Gulde: This isn't my first time standing for TAFF... maybe the third time's the charm? But the nice thing about throwing your hat in the TAFF ring is that even when you lose, you make some great new friends along the way! (Hi friends I made along the way!) I'm a two-time Hugo Finalist, and 2024 will be the 10th anniversary of my first Worldcon (Loncon 3). I've kept in touch with folks I met there, but I would love to attend Glasgow 2024 as the TAFF delegate and make even more fannish friends across the pond!
— Johan Anglemark, James Bacon (Europe); Chris Garcia, Seanan McGuire, Kevin Roche
Gulde had been 3rd out of 3 in the 2017 TAFF Race and 2nd of 4 in the 2019 TAFF Race.
Voting took place from January 14 to April 2, 2024, the Tuesday just after the Levitation Eastercon. 20 ballots had to be disallowed for failure to include a voting fee:
[…] one would have been disqualified in any event for arriving after the deadline, and a further six for failing to prove their eligibility to vote or provide a referee to confirm their fan activity in April 2022 or earlier.
The only year where we’ve found anything similar is 2022, where 23 ballots went into the bit bucket for the selfsame reason. (Last year it was only 3.)
As chance would have it, neither these 20 votes as a whole, nor any permutation of them, would have affected the result if allowed – but they easily could have. […]
Next race, I intend to print the requirement for votes to be accompanied by the minimum sum of £3, €3, or $4 in as large a typeface as there’s room for, and probably IN BOLD to boot. I may also change the wording to refer to a “voting fee” rather than a “donation”, for clarity’s sake. Meantime, though, if anybody can suggest any clue as to why this issue has suddenly sprung up, or has another bright idea to circumvent it… I’m all ears.
Beside this, one vote arrived after the deadline but the voter allowed TAFF to keep his fee anyway.
| Candidate | NAm | Eur* | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sarah Gulde | 30 | 30 | 60 |
| Vanessa Applegate | 15 | 16 | 31 |
| Hold Over Funds | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| No Preference | 14 | 11 | 25 |
| Total Votes | 63 | 57 | 120 |
- ↑ Exact days are not given within the newsletter but available in "Announcements & Updates" column at https://taff.org.uk homepage or at TAFF's Facebook page and group.
* Europe includes 1 Australian vote for privacy. Also note that these are corrected numbers announced in Taffluorescence! #4, after it was found some votes were misplaced and not counted in the original announcement.
Since Gulde won 63 % of first place votes (with preference), run-off was not needed; both candidates got more than 20 % of the vote on both sides of the ocean. Soon after Gulde announced she would fly to UK in late July, "the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September […] working my way from Inverness to London" and stay there, working from "home", until mid-October.
"Voting fees alone (i.e. excluding the great many other areas of income for TAFF) have raised the following moneys: €85 … £381.21 … $738.73." For example, the Eastercon auction brought £ 754, split between TAFF, GUFF, European Fan Fund and SF Encyclopedia. (#3) Overall state of the TAFF funds, itemised in more detail in #4, was $ 8,632 in US and in Europe £ 8,778, € 303, $ 192 and SEK 74.
| 2023 | TAFF | 2025 | 2024 |
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