Voting at InterHash (Updated)
Update (7/26/10): I cross-posted a hash list letter from MTM, a frequent InterHash attendee who offers additional insights into the voting process at Kuching.
Update (7/14/10):
Not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier, but if Asian hashers are determined to keep InterHash in their neck of the woods, they’ll overwhelm the vote again at IH 2012 in Indonesia, choosing the inevitable Asian bidder over Belgium, which has been working hard on an IH 2014 bid for at least two years now. Had IH 2012 gone to Kenya, Belgium would have been a shoo-in. Now I think there’s reason to worry (full disclosure: I’m a Belgium bid supporter and one of Higgins’ ambassadors). Higgins, you’ve got your work cut out for you!
Also: I posted another reader comment received this morning (see comments below), one significantly at odds with all the “official” assurances I’ve received that there was no cheating during the voting in Borneo. It’s well worth reading.
Update (7/12/10):
Per Bwana’s comment (below), Kenya organizers have decided to stage their event one week earlier so as not to clash with InterHash 2012 in Indonesia, and it will not be billed as an alternate InterHash. Bwana also offers an interesting suggestion for future IH venue selection: that we adopt a rule that succeeding IH venues not be on the same continent as the one immediately before. I like!
Original post (7/7/10):
By now, everyone who cares probably knows InterHash 2012 will be held in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, from 24-27 May 2012. The losing IH2012 bidder, Mombasa, Kenya, is planning to host an interhash anyway, on the same weekend.
Voting for future InterHash venues has always generated heat and controversy. Back in the day, only GMs were allowed to vote for future venues. Both times I participated in GM-only votes at InterHash (in 1994 at Rotorua and 2000 at Hobart), I came away believing the winning bidders had packed the room with bogus “GMs” sent in to vote for them. These days all InterHash attendees vote. The last time I participated in that kind of vote, at InterAmericas Hash in 2009, I thought there were a lot of irregularities too, and strongly suspected ballot stuffing by one of the bidding venues (click here to read some world-class whining on the subject). IMHO, most hashers (and IH bid organizers) look upon vote rigging as harmless fun and are more or less shameless about doing it.
In any case, word is that members of the Kenya bidding committee were upset over Indonesia’s win, as were many hashers in attendance (there are reports of booing at the announcement ceremony). Hashers reporting in from Borneo say that Kenya’s going to hold an InterHash anyway. Others say it’ll be an “InterHash-style” event. Either way, unless things change, there’ll be two competing world hash events on the same May weekend in 2012.
Were there voting irregularities in Borneo last weekend? Obviously, I wasn’t there, and even hashers who were there don’t know for sure. There may have been; there may not have been. Personally, I suspect the former.
My personal impression is that the majority of Borneo InterHash attendees were from Malaysia and neighboring Asian countries, since Borneo’s in their backyard. And that these Asian hashers, given the choice between a future InterHash in Asia and one in Africa, voted in a bloc for the Asian alternative. Such a vote could easily overwhelm the vote of non-Asian hashers looking to go InterHashing in a brand new, unexplored venue like Africa.
I understand the frustration and hurt feelings involved in putting on a losing bid. Hawaiian hashers worked hard for more than a year on their InterAmericas Hash 2011 bid; not until a few weeks before hashers began arriving in Colorado for IAH 2009 did anyone know Savannah was going to put on a competing bid; Savannah’s win was a huge upset, and there was much post-vote talk of setting up an alternative event in Hawaii anyway.
But the alternative Hawaiian event didn’t materialize. Calmer heads prevailed, and now everyone is looking forward to IAH in Savannah next year. I bet the same thing’ll happen here, and that the Kenya “InterHash” will evaporate. If that happens, will Kenya bid again for 2014? If they do, that may cause a problem for Belgium, which has been working hard the past two years preparing to bid on InterHash 2014.
Whorator (whom I recently interviewed for this blog) has been pushing the idea of multiple InterHashes. His reasons for doing so have more to do with the sheer size of recent InterHashes (Borneo had over 5,000 hashers in attendance); he’d like to see it broken up into two or three smaller events, possibly held in different parts of the globe.
Whorator’s idea has some appeal. I’m retired and can no longer afford to travel half-way around the world for a weekend of hashing. If there were two InterHashes, one closer to home, I might be able to go. And in any case, the notion that there can be only one InterHash every two years strikes me as too limiting.
The downside to multiple InterHashes is that not everyone will be in the same place at the same time. The biggest draw of InterHash, to me at least, is seeing old friends and meeting hashers I’ve always wanted to meet. If half go to Indonesia and half to Kenya . . . well, you see the problem. So maybe multiple InterHashes isn’t the way to go.
Voting is part of the problem, but the bigger problem, it seems to me, is that there’s only one InterHash every two years. It’s not enough for all the potential host countries! Maybe we should have an InterHash every year.
But that’s crazy talk. Right?
- Flying Booger votes for the loser every time!
© 2010, Flying Booger. All rights reserved.
About Flying Booger Hash House Harrier, man about town. 
Voting irregularities????? I was there…on Saturday when I was picking up my crappy brown XXXXXXL t-shirt, ’cause they had run out of large sizes at registration, the goodie bag personnel were pulling voting slips out of unused bags and handing them out….this is not a “second hand rumour”…saw it myself.
Booing at the announcement…sure was..couldn’t hear a word the Java guy spoke.
If all Java offer is crappy goody bags (tiny shirts), poor and not enough food, disorganised transport and a venue that stank of uncollected garbage by Sunday then ON ON TO KENYA.
KENYA, HOLD IT AND WE WILL COME.
I’ve heard from several hashers who were there and who thought the ballot box was stuffed. I wasn’t there, but when it comes to the two IH votes and one IAH vote I participated in, there was no doubt in my mind large-scale cheating was involved. I don’t think most hashers take vote cheating seriously, and interhash organizers have always tended to look the other way.
But I have to repeat my contention that in this particular case Java may have won anyway, even without cheating, simply because so many Asian hashers were in attendance. Here’s some info sent by another Borneo InterHash attendee:
“The program given out in Borneo revealed that of the 4550 or so who pre-registered (not counting last-minute attendance), the five largest national contingents came from:
– Malaysia: 1100
– Australia: 1100
– Indonesia: 500
– UK: 400
– US: 400
“No other countries had any more than about 100 regos, although several of the larger of these were also from Australasia (e.g., Singapore, Thailand, etc.). Of course, some people live and hash in different countries than the nationality they listed.
“Informal polling suggested that English speakers were nearly unanimous in favoring Kenya, but clearly a good number of Aussies would have had to vote for Java in order for it to have won at all, let alone by the reported 2500 to 1600 count.”
The guy who sent me that information says most English speakers favored Kenya, but he obviously couldn’t have polled all of them. Of that big bloc of Australian attendees, I’m sure a lot of them said they supported Kenya, but when it came time to vote, put their money on Java because it’ll be easier and cheaper to get to from Australia. Just my opinion.
Bwana here, organisor of the Spice Island Hash cruise to Mombasa, Kenya. I was on stage in Kuching both for the bid presentation and on Sunday when the result was announced so I can vouch for what happened in the stadium (Cheers for Kenya, Boos fro Indonesia etc). Don’t know about the voting, probly Booger is right, its just demographics. I was also with the Kenya bid committee when the decision was made to stage an event anyway, but a week earlier to avoid clashing with Indonesia, and it was a very difficult one. None of us want to damage the Interhash tradition, and competing with Interhash was absolutely not our intention. The decision was made after the following considerations:
A very large number of hashers want to go to Africa, the votes were consistently the highest that a losing bid has ever obtained.
A lot of hashers told us they would not in any case go to Indonesia, too close to Borneo, and they wanted an alternative.
The noise in the stadium confirmed this,
Kenya will not bid again, apart from 5 attempts being too many, it is also clear that in Indonesia they could not win against China.
Hashing in Africa needs stimulation. Apart from Kenya, Uganda and a few very “white” hashes in South Africa, African kennels are small and lack confidence.
Lastly, and decisive for me, long term dedicated hashers, some of them on the new “Interhash Advisory Council”, gave their explicit support.
I am writing this comment because I think its important that a single clear message is sent out worldwide. That is – “Kenya supports Interhash, and is providing a grand preramble. Kenya does not favour a split Interhash, in 2012 or in future”. This is one reason why we didn’t hold it as a pre-lube to Africa Hash in Addis. The other is that it wouldn’t be fair to Addis. We are planning a bigger event than they are, and it would be like splitting Africa Hash, which could be fatal.
Kenya is a good enough stop-over for European or American hashers on the way to Asia. If demand justifies we will try to get a special rate from Kenya Airways for the flight to Indonesia. We end on Sunday so there will be plenty of time to get to Indonesia in time for their start. This isn’t true for Aussies and Kiwi Hashers, but it is this group who were most vocal in their support of Africa, and a lot of them are already signed up.
I want to emphasise that I didn’t like what happened in the stadium on Sunday after the announcement, and something needs to be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again. My suggestion, which I have put to the new Interhash Council, is that there should be a rule that Interhash cannot happen twice in a row in the same continent. This would ensure variety and would prevent local hashers hi-jacking Interhash by block bidding to keep it in their region. I think this is what the Internationals did not like, and its what they were protesting about in the stadium.
In the light of all the above we (me and the bid committee) decided, with some trepidation, to go ahead with Mombasa as a pre-ramble. We are taking a risk, financially and in credibility, but we think that its worth it in these specific circumstances. Please send the message out to all your contacts that we in Africa still believe in Interhash.
This e mail is from Bwana alone, not representing the Kenya bid committee.
I received the following comment this morning (7/14/10), from a British hasher who prefers to remain anonymous:
I registered for Interhash in Kuching prior to the Red Dress Run on the Thursday. On the Registration table there must have been around one/two thousand blue voting cards stacked up and a box. You could take as many cards as you wished – and I heard that some hashers did just that. I took one card simply to vote – only to find a second in my goody bag (and what a poor bag) compared with Chiang Mai. If everyone took a card then there were many more than the number of hashers attending. How many cards were in fact printed?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The box turned out not to be the official box. It was not supervised in a responsible manner and in fact the cards from that box were to be transferred to the Official Box, so the comment made when asked, so was the voting nul and void? It certainly was not fair and in my view a farce.
Interhash every other year allows poorer hashers to save up. With Pre and Post Lubes – often better than Interhash as more intimate and friendly you can easily wave goodbye to £2000 inclusive of spending money. Those on the Vodlka Train must have spent at least £4 – 5,000 per person and probably more. Hashing should not be expensive and Interhash should not be exclusive to the well off. It should however have access to all and with the power of Asian voting there needs to be change with the Northern hemisphere being able to offer an Interhash at least every four years assuming there is a sound bid and America doing its own thing due to visa access problems for many hashers.
All hashers should only have one vote, it must be checked and signed by a scrutiny officer, there must be only one box and security needs to be paramount. Only then will the boos of the Kuching bidding be no more. Did Kenya in fact win? If the truth was ever wanted then all those that attended Kuching and were on the official register could vote again in an open ballot for all to see the truth. It may never happen and would require considerable administration to resolve – but at least the truth would be known.
Many hashers have said they will go to Kenya and will not go to Borobudur. Interhash 2012 will be a year of change for Interhashing as who will be at Borobudur to vote for change with a better voting system and what size will it be? Certainly a challenge for those trying to run the event. There are many Interhash folk who have attended virtually all Interhashes. Let them have their say – I have only three to my credit. What is the best way forward? If hashing continues to grow then 5,000 will be 10,000 and is that what we all want? Difficult – but On On.
So long as we all have fun – as I did in Hanoi – a truly fantastic Post Lube, brilliantly organised and 5 star, and more than value for money – as was the Great Train Rumble of 2006.
By the way I did vote for Borobudur as it will be cheaper than Kenya and if it does not rain who will see the Wilderbeasts? There are not enough planes anyway and if I want to go on safari then I would do so over a few weeks as a seperate holiday. I would have wanted to go to hash – and studying the two websites and the quality of preparation greatly influenced my thinking and with many possible pre and post lubes to be considered throughout the region when announced.
http://interhash.com/discuss is a open online discussion forum for Interhash issues.
It does require people to register to post.
There is a poll for ‘Who did you vote for IH2012?” (as suggested above)
another for “Should Interhash be forced to rotate continents?”
and discussions for ideas on minimum requirements for bidders and how to fix the voting process.
I’m cross-posting the following long comment, posted to the hash list this morning by MTM:
Although I have no proof, I still don’t believe that Ahmadinejad was legitimately elected in 2009 as president of Iran. Despite his or his cronies’ depiction of the protesters, I respect them as courageous people. Similarly, I believe that there were ‘voting irregularities’ resulting in the interhash vote being falsely won by Indonesia and I think the booing was a logical response.
Here are my reasons:
1. *Suspicious voting participation:* I have been told by reliable sources that the last three interhash votes (i.e. those where all attendees could vote) were around 60% with Chiang Mai the highest at 66%. With 4540 registrations and 4161 votes (according to Likk’mm), Kuching voting participation jumped up to over 93% – i.e. a rate normally associated with the results reported by the communists during the cold war. Even if we assume that 100% of the Indonesians and Malaysians voted in 2010, the participation rate is over 88% for non Indonesians/ Malaysians*. You don’t need a PhD in statistics to realize that this change from 66% to over 88% is statistically significant – especially when my calculations are in fact understated: they do not allow for the same voting participation of the Indonesians/Malaysians at earlier interhashes although from what I personally witnessed at Chiang Mai, it would have been the same. All in all, anyone who still thinks the figures are not questionable, might be interested in Bernie Madoff’s new investment products…
1) *No cheering for Indonesia’s win:* After the voting results were announced at the venue, around me there was dead silence until after a while a woman started chanting ‘Kenya, Kenya’ which was then taken up by the crowd (I was surprised at the extent of the Kenya support in fact). For the first time ever at an interhash or similar event, I never heard any cheers for the winner and other people who were sitting in different areas report this dearth of cheering. If we assume 100% of the Malaysians/Indonesians, who seemed to be awfully scarce at the hash venue, voted for Borobudur, still around 30% of the other hashers voted for Borobudur. Why did that 30% not
cheer at least before the Kenya chanting began?
2) *Excessive Ballots:* Papermate wrote in his hashspace blog that he saw between 1000-2000 ballots sitting on the table when he registered but there was one in his bag already when he collected it. How was it there were so many extra ballots but they were already put in the bags?
3) *Lots of corruption/fraud smoke:* Four interhash committees for this one interhash due to infighting/accusations; confusion over the ballot boxes demonstrating poor control of the process; accusations of financial abuse; two members hauled up before the police ‘to make statements’; jacked up hotel prices – benefiting someone besides the hotel according to some locals; countries that are not high on Transparency International’s list; and interhashes that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local economy.
So I believe that there were extra ballots cast – either by someone dishonest who could go to the same printer or dishonest use of extras which were printed somehow through the Kuching interhash disorganization. I don’t know what absolute proof people are expecting – an invoice for the printer found on the ground? Photos of some unauthorized person leaving the printers with ballots sheets not in an envelope because the ink is still wet? These are unlikely and thus it was the questionable voting results
announced that set off voters in countries where vote rigging is common – Iran, Moldovans who ransacked their parliament and presidential palace in 2009 upon hearing elections results, Mongolia, in 2008 – all without any
concrete proof. For myself, until someone can reasonably explain why the participation number of non local attendees jumped up by at least 33% (and in all likelihood much higher) or why no one cheered for Indonesia when the winning announcement was made and it was otherwise quiet, I will hold this belief.
I understand that the interhash vote pales in comparison to having a nutcase who can explain/justify everything with conspiracy theories as your president, antagonizing countless world leaders and resulting in the world’s current biggest brain drain. I also think Interhash 2012 is done and dusted.
Instead, I am writing this because:
1) I have a dilemma about which event to go to in 2012. Normally, I would like to go to the official interhash and the most beautiful hash run I have ever done was with a Yojakarta hash. The area is also one of my favourites and the area hashes make the best hash gear. However, I don’t
want to support dishonesty and I am tired of believing that hashers are illicitly financially benefiting from my interhash attendance. Furthermore, most of the people I know, and go to interhash to see, seem to be voting with their feet and going to Kenya. So I don’t know what to plan for 2012 – I do not relish flying between Mombassa and Yojakarta within one week and for some reason Borobudur used the same interhash dates as Kenya had earlier chosen.
2) Most importantly, I would like the interhash voting to be better controlled in the future and to encourage change we need a justification. Can anyone tell me if anything official has been organized? I think booing (I did not boo myself) is a pretty normal and not unreasonable reaction when people believe that something dishonest has taken place and that there is no official method of recourse (and in these circumstances better than ransacking/ setting fire to buildings such as recently in Moldova or Mongolia) but it is not going to get anywhere. Using serial numbers on the ballots would be an inexpensive start and still retain secrecy (the bags have always been handed out at random).
Finally I would like to say that I thought the Kuching team did a remarkable job under the circumstances; throughout Sabah and Sarawak, I was very, very impressed with the friendliness and helpfulness of the locals (and that seems to have been a general impression); and I found Kuching a charming city which I hope to visit again.
MTM
*I took the percentage of Malaysian and Indonesians based on the list in the magazine (appr. 13 of 36 columns) and projected this percentage over the 4540. Even if we assume that all new attendees were local, the participation percentage is much higher than Chiang Mai. I tried to get the voting participation rate and percentage of Malaysians/Indonesians for Chiang Mai but got no response to my email.