The 2012/13 GUFF race ballot – Europe to Australia

About the race
GUFF 2013 is now on. Candidates for the Europe to Australasia race are: Julie McMurray and Mihaela Marija Perkovic. You can vote via Paypal [see (http://guff.lostcarpark.com/vote)] or send cheque (made out to ‘GUFF’) or money order or cash in person to James Shields. 7 The Way, Highlands, Drogheda, Co. Meath, Ireland ( email james [at] lostcarpark [dot] com); or Kylie Ding, 80A Forrest Street, FREMANTLE WA 6160, AUSTRALIA (email kylie_ding [at] hotmail [dot] com).

Voting ends on Monday, 7th January 2013 at 23:59GMT.

About the candidates

Julie McMurray:

I've been in Fandom since 1989 starting out in media fandom. Then I went to Novacon 23 and was completely drawn in by the diversity of the conventions and amazing people I met. I volunteered from my first convention doing all sorts of fun and exciting stuff. My passion is travelling and meeting people and I've always dreamed of going to Australia. Some of my favourite authors include Shaun Tan & Garth Nix. I love reading, larping and volunteering. I'd love to travel to Australia and have an active trip meeting fans, promoting European fandom and worldcon/loncon3 in London 2014.

Julie's nominators are James Bacon, Emma King, Jim Mowatt, Dave Cake and Richard Crawshaw

Mihaela Marija Perkovic:

Mihaela Marija Perkovic: A Croatian fan who is downright crazy about Australia; she earned her degree with a paper on “SF tropes in Peter Carey's short fiction”. Active in fandom since 2004, she has participated at Croatian conventions as lecturer, moderator and GoH host. She runs the SFERA Award Jury and writing workshops, is PR manager of SFera and SFeraKon, and coordinated Kontakt Special Track at Eurocon 2012. Enthusiastic, cheerful and chatty, she is an active blogger and lousy photographer. She plans to attend Swancon and Conflux, visit Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand. Her report will be fun to read.

Mihaela's nominators are Cheryl Morgan, Carolina Gómez Lagerlöf, Cristian Tamas, Anna Hepworth and Adrian Smith.

About you

Please write your name and some contact details in case the administrators need to get in touch
_________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________
Residence: _____ European _____ Australasian _____ Other

Enclosed is ____________ as a contribution to GUFF (minimum GBP5, EUR6, AUD8, HRK50)

Please indicate your voting preference by numbering the following:

_____ McMurray
_____ Perkovic
_____ Hold over funds
_____ No preference

Please do not repeat any numbers; please use only the numbers 1 to 4; you do not need to number all options.

If you think your name may not be known to the administrators then, to ensure that your vote qualifies to be counted, please give in the space below the name and address of an active fan (not a fan group, a candidate or one of their nominators) to whom you are known and who is known to (one of) the administrators.

side 1 ends; side 2 begins

About GUFF
What is GUFF? GUFF was created in 1979. Known as the Get Up-and-over Fan Fund or the Going Under Fan Fund, depending on which direction it's running, GUFF exists to provide funds to enable well-known fans from Australasia and Europe to visit each other's national (or other) conventions and to get to know each other's fandoms better. GUFF, like other fan funds, exists solely through the support of fandom. The candidates for each trip are voted on by interested fans, and each vote is accompanied by a monetary donation. These votes, and the continuing generosity of fandom through auctions and other donations, are what make GUFF possible.

Who may vote?
Voting in the race to send a European fan to Conflux, the 2013 Australian National Convention is open to anyone who was active in fandom prior to January 2011, and who contributes at least GBP5 or AUD8 (or the equivalent in other currencies) to the fund. Larger contributions are encouraged and will be gratefully accepted. Only one vote per person is allowed. You must sign or otherwise verify your ballot, but your vote will not be made public.

Voting Details.
GUFF uses a preferential ballot system which guarantees automatic runoffs until a majority is obtained. You rank the candidates in order of your preference for them. If the leading first-place candidate does not have a majority of votes after the first round of counting, the first-place votes for the lowest-placed candidate are discarded, and the second-place votes on those ballots are counted as first-place votes for the candidates concerned. This process is repeated until one candidate has a majority of all the votes cast. Votes for second and third place candidates are therefore important, but you may not rank any candidate in more than one position on your ballot.
Hold Over Funds. This choice, like '?No award' in award balloting, gives you the chance to vote for no GUFF trip in 2013 if for any reason the candidates do not appeal. Hold over funds may be voted for in any position on the ballot.
No Preference. This choice is for voters who do not wish the GUFF trip to be held over, but who either cannot or prefer not to decide between the candidates.

Donations.
GUFF gratefully accepts your freely given money and material for auction. If you're not eligible to vote, or for some reason you don't wish to vote, why not donate anyway?

Candidates.
Each candidate has posted a bond of GBP15; promised that barring force majeure they will travel to Conflux [ (http://bit.ly/qoaFb9) ], if elected, and provided nominations and a short platform displayed overleaf extolling their many interests and virtues.