TOR has been running a slate for decades. They just did it behind the scenes where no one knew about it.
The voting results (which were posted by Vox Day) made that very clear.
Also, emails were circulated in private (not unlike journolist) to coordinate voting. Some of those emails were accidentally sent to the wrong people.

Sad Puppies is doing nothing wrong, nothing illegal. That can not be said however for the people who are complaining the loudest about all of this.

Wow, this post contains epic amounts of FUD and just pure lying.
First of all, the Sad Puppies group started over two years ago.
Second of all, the response was due to stories being subjected to an ideological purity test before being allowed to win.
Third of all, the stories were no longer about telling a story, but were all about 'sending the right (approved) political message' which was killing the medium.
Fourth of all, several of the awards went to things that not only had nothing to do with Science Fiction or Fantasy, but they sucked ('If you were a dinosaur my love'?? Really?)

Go read all the official Sad Puppies posts, make your own decision. Also I'm pretty sure there are more women nominated this year, than there were last year, and that's from the SP Slate. Don't forget as well, that the SP project was started by a minority.

Last note: The Hugo's have been gamed for a very long time now, look at how many were won by only one publisher. The author of 'Red Shirts' heavily gamed the system the year he won, but no one said a word about that. The promotion of 'message fiction' has seriously hurt the genre, and sales have been going down for years, because most of what's been winning the Hugo's the last five or so years has been crap. Heck, Terry Pratchet couldn't even win a Hugo!!
The awards should be about GOOD stories, not about Politically Correct stories written by the 'RIGHT' person! The very fact that the person writing this story had to LIE about the reason for Sad Puppies, and is more focused on the sex and race of writers should make that pretty clear right off the top.

While they might look funny, strange, or even ugly to some, I have to wonder how soon we might start seeing these designs implemented. Fuel costs are becoming a major issue to the airline industry, if these airframes can be built for the same price as existing ones, Boeing will be all over this. Fuel economy is definitely becoming an important part of the game, also consider that if the aircraft uses less fuel it produces less emissions. Another attractive sales angle in today's society.

So we could see these in as little as ten years.