There has been a lot of discussion in the last few days about the ideal time of publishing the Hugo final ballot (as we now call it) with respect to the Christian holiday of Easter.

Below, I present the actual statistics since 1990, taken from The Long List Of Worldcons, TheHugoAwards.org, and elsewhere, showing the date of the Worldcon, total membership, the date on which the final ballot was announced, its relationship to Easter (using my own cultural references of Holy Thursday – Good Friday – Easter Saturday – Easter Sunday – Easter Monday), the number of nominating ballots and the number of final votes.

What jumps out is of course that the seven highest vote totals ever, in either stage, have been in the last seven years, and on four of those years the final ballot was announced on Easter Saturday. There is therefore little empirical evidence to suggest that participation in the Hugos suffers from an Easter Saturday announcement.

The two highest ever votes on the final ballot, in 2014 and 2015, both followed Easter Saturday anouncements. One of those years was the year that a widely cited piece criticising the Easter Saturday publication was published; in fact that year saw a record level of participation.

NB: Missing off the end of the table: the pre-2011 record of final votes was set at NorEasCon 2 in 1980, with 1788 voters. The next highest was 1595 for MidAmeriCon in 1976. The highest number of nominating votes before 1990 was at ConStellation in 1983, with 660. The second highest was the previous year's L.A.Con IV, the biggest Worldcon ever, with 648.

Easter is late next year, as it was last year, and Dublin 2019 will announce the final ballot earlier in April, as Worldcon 75 did last year. But my personal feeling is that announcing the ballot to a fannish audience at conventions over Easter weekend appeals to the core Hugo voting community and does no demonstrable harm to the awards; so it would be my preferred option, if the date of Easter itself is suitable and other things are equal.