Voting has started for the 2019 North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC). The Worldcon 76 San Jose has published the 2019 NASFiC Site Selection ballot on their web site and distributed it to their members, according to an announcement on their web site.

Members of Worldcon 76 in San Jose, California are eligible to vote on the site of the 2019 NASFiC upon payment of a $30 Advance Supporting Membership (“Voting”) Fee. This fee purchases a supporting (voting) membership in the 2019 NASFiC, regardless of who wins or how you vote. It is unrelated to any “pre-supporting memberships” (donations paid to any bid committees). Members can vote before the convention through conventional paper mail by printing the ballot and mailing it with payment, or they can e-mail a signed PDF of their ballot, or they can vote at the convention. Payment mailed in advance must be by check or money order in US dollars. If voting by e-mail or paying by credit card, members can purchase a “voting token” from the Worldcon 76 membership web site using the instructions published on the ballot. If voting at the convention, payment can be by cash, check, or credit card in US Dollars. You can also designate someone else to deliver your ballot to the convention on your behalf.

Voting in advance closes August 11, 2018. Worldcon 76 must receive your ballot by that date. (Postmark date does not count.) Voting at the convention opens on the afternoon of Thursday, August 16, 2018 and closes at 6 PM Pacific Daylight Time on Saturday, August 18, 2018.

Bids for future Worldcons are listed on the NASFiC Bids page. One bid qualified for the 2019 NASFiC Site Selection by filing the required documents with Worldcon 76: Utah in 2019. However, World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) rules allow for write-in votes and votes for “None of the Above.” If None of the Above wins, there will be no 2019 NASFiC. Because of the rules on the counting of site selection ballots, the only possible outcomes are a qualified bid (including a qualified write-in) or “None of the Above” winning the election. Non-qualified bids (write-ins that don’t file the necessary papers, hoaxes, jokes, etc.) cannot win the election.

The results of the election will be announced at the WSFS Business Meeting on the morning of Sunday, August 19, 2018.

This year’s Worldcon, MidAmericon II, has issued the site selection ballot for the 2017 NASFiC. This allows WSFS members to decide which of the two competing bids (San Juan, Puerto Rico or Valley Forge, Pennsylvania) will host the 2017 North American Science Fiction Convention. A NASFiC is held in North America when the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) is outside of North America. The 2017 Worldcon, Worldcon 75, is in Helsinki, Finland.

You can download the ballot, and also information posted by the two bids, from the MidAmericon II website (scroll down past the information about the 2018 Worldcon site selection).

You can only vote in the site selection election if you are a current Supporting or Attending Member of MidAmericon II. In addition you will need to purchase an Advance Supporting Membership of the 2017 NASFiC. The price of this has been set at $35 by agreement between the two bids and the administering Worldcon. Voting in site selection automatically makes you a Supporting (non-attending) member of the 2018 NASFiC. You will be able to upgrade that supporting membership to an Attending membership of whichever bid is selected after the votes have been counted.

For NASFiC purposes, North America includes Hawaii, Central America, and the islands of the Caribbean.

Further instructions are available on the MidAmericon II website and on ballot itself.