The 2023 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Fan Vote wrapped up on Friday, after a nearly 3 month voting period. The top five were locked in after just two weeks, so the rest of the polling time was spent waiting to see if leader George Michael could pass the one million vote mark (he did). Michael, Cyndi Lauper, Warren Zevon, Iron Maiden, and Soundgarden will each receive one vote which will be tallied with the 1000+ others from the Voting Committee, whose ballots were also due on the 28th. Inductees should be announced this week.

Much of the history of the fan vote has been documented on this site, primarily revolving around the myriads of technical issues of the poll. There is now an exclusive page devoted to the final statistics of each year's Fan Vote, beginning in 2013. Reviewing the nominees' placements, it's easy to see there is a rough correlation between the fans' choices and the inductees, and how rare it is to finish low in the poll and be inducted (but it does happen occasionally).

View the Rock Hall Fan Vote History and Totals

Unlike most of its peer institutions, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has never been very open about the rules and procedures used to nominate and induct artists. They won't reveal who is on the Nominating or Voting Committees, what the final tallies are, or even innocuous information such as how many votes are actually cast. It's left to outsiders to piece together the puzzle and trust the Rock Hall is actually running their induction process with some integrity.

Two years ago, Rock Hall CEO Greg Harris said in an interview that the fan votes "form two composite ballots that get tallied with the total." This was the first time there has been any reference to the fan vote counting anything more than a single ballot, and it was never clarified.

Here’s a long interview with Rock Hall Museum President Greg Harris where he addresses the issue of the number of women in the Hall of Fame. He also says that the Fan Vote is worth two ballots, which is contrary to what the Hall’s official line is. https://t.co/z5t7CnQ7bW pic.twitter.com/ZJ3G2OjKMI

— Future Rock Legends (@futurerocklgnds) February 9, 2020

On the most recent episode of the Who Cares About the Rock Hall? podcast, Rock Hall board member Alec Wightman was interviewed by hosts Joe Kwaczala and Kristen Studard. Wightman is in a unique position where he sits on the Boards of both the Rock Hall Foundation (in New York) and also the Rock Hall Museum (in Cleveland):

Joe: And you have a ballot…

Wightman: I do have a ballot. I have a ballot because of my membership on the Foundation Board, at least I think that's why I have a ballot.

Joe: Are we to assume that everybody on the Board has a ballot? I would imagine so.

Wightman: I'm sure everyone on the Foundation Board has a ballot.

Kristen: So everyone on the Foundation Board would have a ballot, but everyone on the Museum Board would not necessarily?

Wightman: Well, they would not in the ordinary course. Now having said that, a little bit like the Fan Vote, everybody on the Cleveland Board has an opportunity…

Kristen: To share one ballot?

Wightman: Yes [laughter]

Kristen: This is insane.

Wightman: So it's fun. Everybody gets a vote and the folks in Cleveland make sure we get updates from time to time about how our group is voting. It counts as one ballot towards the induction.

Kristen: That is way more weighted than the Fan Vote ballot, but that's still a raw deal.

Joe: Yeah, I think so too. I'd say let everybody on the Museum Board have a vote as well.

Needless to say, this rule about a second aggregated ballot isn't listed anywhere on the Rock Hall's website or openly discussed. The only hint prior to this explanation was Greg Harris's quote about the Fan Vote being worth two ballots.

There are roughly 86 members on the Museum's Board of Trustees that would get folded into a single ballot, as opposed to the five million fan votes that make up the other.

Here is the list of Rock Hall Board members as of 2019:

I keep seeing this in 1 Em fan group on facebook. So, I tried 1 and it worked, email is already registered. Tried another 4, all worked. Maybe this is one of the reasons why we're being outvoted. pic.twitter.com/CGGofijUxA

— Marshall Matters (@M_Slizzle) February 23, 2022

On Twitter, the Rock Hall clarified the rules in a series of tweets:

Voting is capped at one ballot per day. We believe in our voting process, and appreciate that the fans need to believe it in, too. Therefore we most definitely track and void duplicate votes that exceed this cap – as well take steps necessary to prevent voting that is inconsistent with our voting parameters.

We asked if they considered the use of email extensions to be the same email address:

Yes, voting is capped at one ballot per day per email address. We do consider “+” and “.” extensions to be the same email address. We've also added parameter language to our 2022 Nominee page: rockhall.com/2022-nominees

We asked if those types of emails have been voided since the beginning, or if this is a new policy in response to voting anomalies:

Every Induction cycle bring a new “challenge” in terms of voting anomalies. As soon as we identify a new issue, we take immediate steps to void and prevent votes that are inconsistent with our voting parameters. We love that our fans are passionate about their favorite artists, and we truly want to keep the Fan Vote fun and fair.

Here are the brief voting rules from their site:

Duran Duran, Eminem, Pat Benatar, Dolly Parton, and Eurythmics are currently the top five artists in the Fan Vote. Even with eight weeks to go those artists will more than likely be the final top five, and each receive one additional vote.

Click here to access the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker

If you follow the annual Baseball Hall of Fame inductions even a little bit, you are probably aware of the public Vote Tracker, started in 2013 by Ryan Thibodaux. The tracker collects all ballots that are shared publicly (or anonymously sent) and records them in a spreadsheet that anyone can access. The Vote Tracker has not only been invaluable in predicting who will be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but has elevated the discourse among the fans who really care about who gets honored in Cooperstown.

That leads us to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an institution that could benefit from more transparency in its process. Each year, Rock Hall voters are faced with a ballot that is stacked top-to-bottom with worthy artists, but are required to select no more than five names. Voters assume that their peers will likely be supporting superstar Artist X, so instead throw a choice to niche-genre Artist Y, who theoretically needs the support more. The Fan Vote results can become the only data point a voter has to reference, which is not a fair representation of voter sentiment or Hall of Fame worthiness. It turns the process into a strategic guessing game, but one with gigantic stakes.

As a way to help voters with this task, we're introducing the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker, where we will track any ballots that get shared in a public forum (Twitter, Instagram, blogs, podcasts, etc). We're also offering voters the chance to participate anonymously by emailing a photo of their official ballots to futurerocklegends [at] gmail.com so it can tracked in the totals without the public exposure. The current Rock Hall Fan Vote leaders will of course also be recorded as a ballot.

There will be some understandable trepidation among voters about sharing their choices, but they should take comfort that many music writers have been posting their ballots online for years. (One of the benefits of these stacked ballots is that literally any combination of five artists is easily defensible.) To manage expectations, we don't believe this will be a meaningful sample size to predict the will of 1000+ voters, but let's have some fun and give it a try this year. We're grateful for anyone willing to help!

Click here to access the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker

Special thanks to @NotMrTibbs and the Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot Tracker team for the inspiration!

Every year when the nominees are announced, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame focuses a huge amount of the attention it receives, not on the careers and music of the nominated artists, but on its website's "Fan Vote." There's a coordinated effort from the Rock Hall to include it in press releases, have the nominated artists promote it on social media, and the Rock Hall's representatives are sure to bring it up in every interview they give about the ballot. On their website, the first thing you see on their homepage is a large red button that says "VOTE NOW." In fact, the only way to find out who is nominated from RockHall.com is to click through to the Fan Poll.

With all of the attention placed on fans casting their votes, a casual observer would reasonably assume that the poll carries significant weight in the results. In reality, the top five vote getters get added to a single ballot that is submitted with the other 1000+ ballots from the Voting Committee. So the maximum weight of the millions of fan votes is somewhere around 0.1% of the total.

Can that single ballot make a difference between getting inducted or not? In theory, yes. But as the Rock Hall's president Joel Peresman has said many times before, the number of inductees is variable each year, so if the 5th and 6th or 6th and 7th artists are close together, they just induct them both. It's safe to say that if two artists are only one vote apart, they will either both will be inducted, or both be left out. The Rock Hall doesn't use an independent accounting firm to count the votes, and never reveals totals, so there is no way to know the final margins.

There's clearly an asymmetrical relationship between the attention placed on the "Fan Vote" and the impact it has in the results. Since the fan poll started with the 2013 ballot, 54% of artists finishing in the top five get inducted. That correlation has led some to assume that a first place finish guarantees induction, but as we saw in 2020 with the Dave Matthews Band, that isn't the case. That leaves fans disheartened after expending a lot of time into voting daily for up to three months. Last year, the fan vote captured the attention of Nigerians who were excited to see Fela Kuti nominated for the Rock Hall. They organized online and rallied Fela to the top of the poll, before Tina Turner eventually overtook him for first place. When Fela wasn't inducted, fans (and Fela's family members) were dismayed to learn that all of that voting had minimal impact on the results. Feeling burned, Fela fans have not returned to vote this year. He's currently in last place.

The reasons the Rock Hall places so much emphasis on the poll are fairly obvious:

• It brings fans to RockHall.com
• It collects email addresses for marketing purposes (required to vote)
• It provides fans a way to feel like they have some say in the process
• It promotes the Hall of Fame through social media

Rock Hall representatives (like Nominating Committee member Alan Light) have defended the fan poll by suggesting that its impact extends far beyond a single ballot because actual voters look at the results and give additional consideration to fan favorites. But as we have heard over and over from actual voters, because they are limited to selecting five artists, they are forced to vote strategically for artists who they suspect need the most support. By looking at the fan poll, they may assume that those at the top won't need their help, so they cast their votes in a different direction. Whether this happens in practice or not, it is disingenuous for the Rock Hall to emphatically state that the Fan Vote has a beneficial effect beyond the single ballot.

What should the Rock Hall do with the Fan Vote? Here are some ideas:

1. Shorten the duration of the vote to one week. As we have documented over the last nine polls, the top five get locked in after a week and there is no significant change in the results after that. Just once, in 2014, was there a lead change between fifth and sixth towards the end of the poll, and both artists got in anyway. Why the Rock Hall extended the poll from two months to three months last year is inexplicable. They are simply taking advantage of fans' time because they are willing to do whatever they can for their favorite artists.
2. Only permit fans to vote a single time per email address. Why allow fans to vote every day? The fan vote should measure fans' assessment of the artists Hall of Fame worthiness, not fanbase intensity and commitment to gaming the results.
3. Relatedly, fans should be required to vote for five artists. Fans are incentivized to only vote for the single artist they want inducted, and they often do.
4. Allow fans to opt out of Rock Hall marketing emails when registering to vote. It's just the courteous thing to do.
5. Be as clear as possible up front about how much the vote is actually worth (now you have to vote first and then read the fine print).
6. Dial down the emphasis placed on the Fan Vote to make it more in line with its actual importance. Shortening the duration would go a long way to helping, and then the incredible careers of the nominees can rightfully take center stage.

Since the fan poll is only worth a single ballot, many people suggest making it worth much more, to allow fans to have a real impact on the results. Some suggest automatic induction for the Fan Vote winner, or increasing the weight of the Fan Vote up to 10% of all votes. There are significant reasons not to do this:

• The Rock Hall's Fan Vote has a history of being susceptible to bots and voting irregularities. The 2015, 2016, and 2017 polls all had serious issues that put the results into question. The Hall of Fame accepted the results anyway.
• If the fan vote winner is automatically inducted, how would that artist feel about it? Sure, there would be validation from the fans, but the reason the Hall of Fame is special is because inductees are chosen in part by other Hall of Famers. Being accepted and included into the Hall of Fame by your own heroes is the kind career affirmation that you can't get anywhere else. Think about how it would feel to find out that Joni Mitchell, Chuck D, Paul McCartney, or Stevie Wonder voted for you to be in the Hall of Fame versus the feeling of winning a silly online fan poll.
• The Fan Vote has been especially biased against Black artists, who routinely show up towards the bottom of the ballot. Even a first ballot Hall of Famer like Jay-Z finished last. Other than the MC5, minority artists have finished last in the voting every year. Giving a flawed poll even more weight would not be a good thing (and yes, the actual Rock Hall voters have their own biases, but that's not an excuse to make things worse).
• Fan-selected awards are generally not as prestigious as peer-selected ones. Getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is career-defining honor. It shouldn't reduce itself to a People's Choice Award since there are plenty of other measures of fan validation — record sales, touring revenue, chart success, song streams — the Rock Hall shouldn't be one of them.
Comments

• Underrepresentation of nearly every genre of music among its inductees.
• Skepticism by fans and artists over the fairness and propriety of the induction system.
• Lack of diversity and conflicts of interest among the decision makers at the Rock Hall.
• The mishandling of inducted artists, which led to animosity and refusals to appear or perform at the Induction Ceremony.
• Unclear rules which get changed without logic or explanation.

Many of us who follow the Rock Hall have come up with a number of proposals which could help solve their chronic issues.

1. Address the Backlog: This, more than any other issue, is the heart of the problem. The current induction system, which only inducts between five and seven performers each year, has produced a lengthy list of artists who are arguably worthy of induction, but can’t break through. Every year in which more worthy artists become eligible than are inducted, the list just gets longer. By arbitrarily limiting the number of inductees, the Hall created a system where it is guaranteeing that worthy artists will never get a chance to be honored. The Rock Hall is currently at the bottom of a hole they have been digging for over 20 years. They’re not going to get out of it by increasing the number of annual inductees by one or two per year. More creative measures are needed. Some potential solutions:
   • On the Hall Watchers podcast, Eric and Mary proposed moving the ceremony to a two night event which would allow the Hall to induct more artists without compromising the induction ceremony format. For its 25th anniversary, the Rock Hall staged a two-night all-star concert at Madison Square Garden, so they have some experience with that format.
   • The Hall could also move to a system of themed induction classes, where a dozen artists could be enshrined around a common theme.
   • This upcoming ceremony will be the Rock Hall’s 35th, which provides an opportunity for the Rock Hall to have super-sized classes every five years.
   • Change the entire ceremony structure to allow for large induction classes. This would require shorter speeches and performances, but it would give the Rock Hall flexibility to induct significantly larger classes.

   A change like this can’t happen without upending the expectations of what a Rock Hall induction looks like (but again, this is the hole that the Rock Hall dug itself).

2. Create a Veteran’s Committee: Years ago, Tom Lane offered up this proposal modeled on other Sports Halls of Fame which have a system meant to catch worthy inductees who were left behind for one reason or another.

   As John Sykes takes steps to keep the Rock Hall up with the times, it would behoove them to create a new category that fills in the historical gaps in the rock and roll canon. The Rock Hall has been trying to play catch up for 35 years now, and there are still foundational artists who can’t even get nominated, and it’s not even at the expense of newly eligible artists who also can’t get on the ballot.

3. Listen to Criticism: Over the past year, much of the conversation about the Rock Hall has revolved around the underrepresentation of women. Instead of taking a dismissive attitude about the issue, listen to your critics and engage in the conversation. Take the opportunity to improve your institution and create some goodwill with the public. Burying your head in the sand isn’t going to work.

4. Become Transparent: The Hall has been proudly opaque since its inception which has led to conspiracy theories and allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest. The Hall could turn that around under its new leadership by publishing their rules, providing independent accounting of votes (or publishing the numbers), reveal the members of the Nominating and Voting Committees, and making those in charge available to the media. As non-profit entities, the Rock Hall Foundation and Museum should have a minimum amount of transparency about the core functions that support their mission.

5. Stop the secret inductions: We highlighted a couple of examples of artists who were quietly inducted after the fact. This type of behavior creates distrust with the public and doesn’t properly honor those who get inducted.

6. Eliminate or Fix the Singles Category: A lot has already been written on this subject, so we won’t rehash it here, but it’s unwise to create Rock Hall categories that don’t have a clearly defined purpose and are left to the whims of one individual.

7. Term Limits for Nominating Committee Members: The Country Music Hall of Fame utilizes a system where Nominating Committee members are appointed to three year terms. Each year, one third of the members get replaced. After serving out their term, members are eligible to return for another three years, but only after sitting out for at least one term.

   While there would be some institutional knowledge lost in this system, it would greatly increase the number and diversity of voices in the room. Members who distinguish themselves would be invited back after three years, while others would just be let go.

8. Rethink the Voting Committee: There has always been a tension between the will of the Nominating Committee and the results produced by the 1000 or so members of the Voting Committee. The NomCom nominates worthy artists over and over and yet they keep getting bypassed by the voters. While it seems fair on the surface, a system where each inductee automatically becomes a voter has created a population of voters who tend to favor artists closest to themselves, which magnifies the imbalance. One way to improve the system would be to give inductees with multiple members a fraction of a single vote. So each member of The Cure would get 1/10th of a vote as opposed to the 10 votes they currently get. By minimizing the voting power of large bands, it would provide a more representative power to each solo inductee.

9. Change the Voting System: With the significant backlog of worthy artists, getting on the Rock Hall ballot is an achievement unto itself. Why not expand the list of artists who meet that threshold by greatly expanding the number of nominees well past the 15-20 that have been nominated in recent years? There is a lot of frustration from the Nominating Committee about not wanting to put forward similar artists in the same year, but a ballot of 50 names would open up a new world of possibilities. Likewise, when the Voting Committee gets the ballot, allow them to vote for as many Hall of Fame worthy artists as they like. Currently they are restricted to voting for only five, which creates strategic voting that leaves clearly worthy artists on the outside. There are so many different ways to vote that are superior than the current system, the Rock Hall should start experimenting immediately. (The Hall should consult with inductee Krist Novoselic, who has been an advocate for proportional representation in politics.)

10. Give the Fan Vote some actual power or just eliminate it: The Hall of Fame seems to love the fan engagement from the online fan poll, but most fans have no idea how little it (officially) matters in the actual tally (the fan vote is cumulatively about 0.1% of the total ballots). Provided the Rock Hall can stage an online poll that can’t be rigged, the results should at least be worth 5% of the total. Otherwise you’re just taking advantage of passionate fans’ time.

There are many other ways that the Rock Hall could be improved, but the most important thing for John Sykes is to just get started.

Multifactor authentication ensures votes are cast legitimately, while top-of-the-line encryption protects fan voter privacy and anonymity.

Featuring 100% accuracy and transparency throughout the entire fan vote process, Votem removes any potential for human error or controversy caused by miscounting or mishandling votes.

The Rock Hall updated the vote totals after an internal “audit,” likely prompted by a tweet from Journey which suggested the poll may have been “hacked” after their lead over E.L.O. shrank from 5,000 votes to 2,000 votes over the course of a week.

Don't know what happened but this appears to have been hacked or taken down.
We were 5k in lead and now 2k
Vote... https://t.co/1MdobRqcKL

— JOURNEY (@JourneyOfficial) November 28, 2016

What kind of polling operation holds onto 40% of votes for a month and then releases them all at once with little explanation? Certainly not one that supposedly features “100% accuracy and transparency.” This is the same “transparent” poll that didn’t show vote totals for over a week after voting started. This is the same poll that promises “voter privacy and anonymity,” but then sneakily registers you for the Rock Hall newsletter when you vote with your email address.

This is the same polling company that is supposed to “remove any potential for controversy.” (Did the Rock Hall actually pay for this service?)

As Steve Miller said about the Rock Hall back in the spring, “I think it’s time for the people running this to turn it over to new people, because it doesn’t need to be this difficult.”

Votem did not respond to questions regarding their poll methodology.

Update: The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame offered up additional details about the vote increase, also insisting that the poll had not been “hacked.” The Rock Hall shared their own graph of results for the month of November, which shows the extra votes distributed over the course of the month.

Iconic Rock Talk Show thinks this whole thing could have been handled better.

1. This year’s performer class includes only five artists, down from the six that have been inducted in recent years. Given the backlog of deserving artists, why the reduction?
2. Was the number of inductees reduced to shorten the length of the induction ceremony?
3. If so, why did you schedule the induction ceremony at Barclays Center the day before a hockey game? The last time the ceremony was at Barclays, you had to cancel the end of show jam session because of the curfew.
4. Regarding the inducted members of Deep Purple, can you explain the rationale for how vocalist Rod Evans can be inducted but bassist Nick Simper is not, despite being in the band during the same era (1968-1969) and performing on the same albums?
5. We have our theories, but can you explain why Steve Miller has been inducted solo, with no one else from the Steve Miller Band?
6. Do bands with a complicated membership history have a disadvantage in getting nominated or inducted?
7. Who were the “experts” you used to determine which members of the inducted artists got in?
8. The official fan poll effectively ended on October 15th after you instituted limits to protect against volume voters (human or otherwise). Why was the fan poll created with no protective measures in the first place?
9. When it was determined that the fan poll had fatal flaws, why wasn’t the poll scrapped in favor of a new, secure poll?
10. Why did you create a poll with unlimited voting (that has almost zero impact on the actual results) that takes advantage of fans’ passions for their favorite artists by wasting their time?
11. Did the fan poll last year have similar unusual voting activity?
12. It has been reported that the Voting Committee was expanded this year. How many new voters were added? How many of the new voters are women? (Of the dozen or so new voters we have seen, none are women.)
13. One of the new voters this year is Howard Stern Show producer Gary Dell’Abate (aka Baba Booey). What are the qualifications for becoming an official voter?
14. Speaking of women, of the 25 people inducted in the Class of 2016, zero are women. Do you feel the Rock Hall has a gender diversity problem? If so, how do you plan to address it?
15. Some of the members of the Nominating Committee have recently complained that the Voting Committee isn’t knowledgable enough about the broad history of rock and roll, and ignores the clear wishes of the Nominating Committee (Chic is example #1). Are there plans to change the composition of the electorate (most of whom are Rock Hall inductees) that would be more in line with the Nominating Committee’s views of rock and roll?
16. Speaking of voters, how many of the over 800 ballots were actually returned this year?
17. Who counted the votes and will you release the voting totals?
18. Official ballots were due from voters on December 15th, but it seems clear that the inductees were determined and notified prior to the voting deadline. Given the reported low return rate of ballots, how could you be sure late ballots wouldn’t change the results?
19. Only inductees in the “performer” category were revealed. When will inductees in the other categories be announced?
20. The induction ceremony locations were previously going to be on three year cycles between New York, Cleveland and Los Angeles. This year was to be an L.A. year. Why was the L.A. ceremony scrapped? Are there currently plans to return to L.A.?

If you have additional questions about the Rock Hall process that go beyond the usual “why isn’t [my favorite artist] in the Rock Hall?”, leave them in the comments.

To get a sense of how real fans vote (this is the 10th year of our poll!), let’s look at some vote distributions from various internet polls where you can cast a ballot for multiple artists (all results as of 10/14/2015).

First, the Future Rock Legends poll (5100 total votes, must vote for five artists):

Next, the Cleveland.com poll (7277 total votes, can vote for up to eight artists):

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Poll (4920 total votes, can vote for up to six artists):

And finally, the official Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Fan Poll (over 158 million total “votes,” can vote for up to five artists):

Rock Hall Museum President Greg Harris was touting last year’s record 59 million votes in the fan poll, which took two months. This year, they shattered that record in less than 48 hours, but examining the results, it’s not hard to wonder if there aren’t non-human hands at work. The Rock Hall failed once again to publish any rules about the poll, just urging people to “vote often.” Unfortunately, the one poll that is the easiest to game is the one that counts.

One of the reasons this is so outrageous is that there are a lot of real fans of the nominated artists who are spending a lot of time voting and urging others to vote. But they can’t compete with scripts that can cast one million votes per hour.

The Rock Hall needs to remove this poll, scrap the results, and replace it with one that is fair and secure. The first two years of the fan poll, the Rock Hall enlisted online poll professionals PollDaddy to host the poll. Beginning last year, they took the poll into their own hands which has led to nothing but erratic results (last year, Nine Inch Nails received 22% of the vote; this year, just 0.3%, which is strange to say the least).

Let’s also not forget that the lack of rules with the fan poll is symptomatic of the induction process in general. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the only major award that doesn’t use an independent accounting firm to tally the results from their voters.