Where a group of people all nominate the same set of candidates. The Hugo system [1] starts with nominations - every voter can nominate up to five works in each

Where a group of people all nominate the same set of candidates. The Hugo system [1] starts with nominations - every voter can nominate up to five works in each category. The six works which get nominated the most (in some sense) become the shortlist. There is then a ranked ballot vote amongst the shortlist in each category. Until 2017, nominations were evaluated by counting the number of nomination ballots that each work appeared on. A hundred people nominate a work, it scores a hundred. The thing is, there are a lot of books published every year, so there are a lot of candidates, and so nominations are quite spread out. In 2015 [2], to get to the top of the shortlist for best novel, a book needed ~400 nominations, from ~1800 ballots; for best short story, ~300 nominations, from ~1200 ballots. So if you can get together a group of 400 voters, and they all agree to nominate the same five works in each category (a slate), then you can get all of those five works onto the shortlist. 400 is not a small number, but it's no more than a third of all voters, and that third can take over the shortlist, and dominate the contest (although their nominations are quite unlikely to actually win - but it is still very annoying!). In 2017, the system was changed, to do some sort of more proportional evaluation [3] that should reduce the power of slates. Consensus seems to be that it worked. [1] https://www.thehugoawards.org/the-voting-system/ https://www.thehugoawards.org/the-voting-system/ [2] https://chaoshorizon.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/2015hugostatistics.pdf https://chaoshorizon.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/2015hugosta... [3] https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo https://electowiki.org/wiki/E_Pluribus_Hugo