Hugo voting
It may be instructive for those who haven't closely examined Hugo voting before to take a look at last year's results, which I think are fairly typical. That page provides links to the voting details in each category. In most categories last year, the instant-runoff voting system eventually resulted in the winner being the nominee that got the most first-place votes from the start, but in the case of the related-book category, the nominee that won started out in second place in the first round of the IRV. Note that in no category did a nominee achieve the majority of votes on the first round.
At some point I'll dig up and post a link to that page that shows how IRV works using Muppets; it's a pretty good example. In the meantime, I'll just note some numbers:
In each category of last year's Hugo voting, not counting the Campbells (where numbers were significantly lower), it took anywhere from about 80 to about 130 first-place votes to survive the first round of the instant runoff. The winning nominee in each category started out with between 160 and 370 first-place votes (Novel and Dramatic Presentation being at the high end, of course; Dramatic Presentation had the most voters, with 972 ballots cast).
I'm guessing that voter turnout will be a bit higher this year (based solely on the fact that there were more nominating ballots than usual).
When the subject of Hugos came up last night, there was a great deal of confusion. Two people present never received nominating ballots, and had come to a variety of erroneous conclusions based on that fact, about who can and can't vote. If you have any doubts at all, I urge you to go to the official ConJosé Hugo page and read all about it. The short version is that if you were a member of last year's Millennium PhilCon, or if you are a member of this year's ConJosé, you can vote in the Hugos. Voting deadline is July 31. (I think that you can become a member and vote at the same time, anytime up to 7/31.) I'm sure that all of the short fiction will be online shortly. Go forth and vote!
At some point I'll be posting some info about the tricky bits of IRV, such as when it's a good idea to leave works off of the ballot entirely rather than putting them in fifth place. But not today.