Voting

Hundreds of writers vote together to choose manuscripts for publication with much better discernment than at any other editorial. All votes are secret ballot and cast on a secure server.

For each round, each writer-voter is assigned six (6) manuscripts according to the following rules:

• Participants are never assigned their own manuscript.
• Participants will never be assigned the same manuscript twice.
• If a participant fails to vote in a given round, then their manuscript is withdrawn from voting, does not advance into any following rounds, and they cannot vote in any following rounds.

Writer-voters provide feedback on their assigned manuscripts and rank them from first to sixth. Each manuscript’s score averaged, and the top one-third of manuscripts advances to the next round.

Worst-case voting scenarios

The system works extremely well at gathering everyone's opinion and finding the manuscripts which writers consider the best. There are, however, small elements of chance within the voting process:

1. A manuscript may receive fewer votes and comments than expected because the amount of feedback received depends on voter participation.

   • Participation is very high: per vote, around 95% of manuscripts in Round One receive four, five, or six votes.
   • The small number of Round One manuscripts which receive three or fewer votes will automatically advance to Round Two so that all manuscripts receive at least four votes, which equals twenty (20) comparisons to other manuscripts.

2. At the end of each round, equally ranked manuscripts on the threshold of advancing into the next round may be randomly selected to advance.

   • For example, if ten manuscripts receive an average rank of 4.00, but there are only five available spots in the next round, the five advancing manuscripts will be chosen randomly.

3. In the unlikely event that there is a tie among any of the prize-winning or published manuscripts, the tie will be broken by random selection.

4. A very small number manuscripts may randomly be assigned one more or one less voter per round in order to equally distribute the votes between manuscripts.

Minimum manuscripts per vote

Each vote should have about 400 writers participating for a robust, many-opinioned vote. If there are not enough participants, entrants in the underpopulated vote may be rolled into the next scheduled vote and notified by email, at which point they can participate in the subsequent vote or withdraw their manuscript and receive refund on their entry fee.

Voting integrity

• Only one manuscript per writer is allowed to enter each short story or poetry issue's voting.

• All submission are searched for duplicate or similar content; any duplicate or similar manuscripts uploaded subsequent to the original manuscript will be removed from the voting process.

All credit card billing names and addresses per issue are analyzed for duplicates and similars; any manuscript uploaded subsequent to the original manuscript associated with duplicate or similar payment information will be removed from the voting process.

Results of each issue's vote are made public at the end of voting rounds, with each manuscript's rank and individual votes displayed. Writers voted for prize winnings and/or publication must submit identification as part of the winnings/publication contract.

Manuscripts that do not follow the submission guidelines of the Manuscript Requirements and the Entry Fee Payment Terms may not be allowed winnings and/or publication. Sixfold reserves the right to remove any manuscript or voter from the voting process that conflicts with the integrity and fairness of the vote.

During the process of reading and voting for any issue, you may read content that includes profanity, depictions of violence, depictions of sexual situations, etc. as part of the integral, artistic context of the short-stories and poems submitted for your reading and voting.

Sixfold’s web pages are coded in good faith to work with all browsers, but it is the entrant’s responsibility to use a browser that is able to interact and function with the site, including a browser able to upload and download PDF files and submit voting data online by deadline. After any issue’s voting rounds begin, there can be no refund of entry fee due to entrant’s inability to cast a vote because of browser inability to interact with the site.