The End of Elections

Voting in the Union’s “Big Elections” opened on Monday. As well as the Sabbatical, Student Trustee and Faculty Union Executive positions students can also use the Union’s online system to vote for members of their Departmental Society committee. 186 votes were cast in the first five minutes of voting, with well over 80,000 votes having been cast by over 5,200 voters at the time of going to print. This represents a turnout of 49% of the Undergraduate population and 13% of the Postgraduates, just over 30% of all Imperial students. This is already far above the average national turnout in UK university student elections, 16%. Imperial Union hopes to have achieved the largest turnout in the nation by the end of voting, with at least 55% of Undergraduates and 20% of Postgraduates having voted.

Voting, however, has not been trouble free, with technical problems affecting the voting system early on Monday morning. Amongst those affected has been Jack Hewitt, candidate for Deputy President (Welfare), whose manifesto was not initially displayed on the in-line manifesto view on the website, potentially leading voters to believe that he had not submitted it. The manifesto was viewable upon direct clicking on the candidate’s name. Hewitt maintains that his manifesto “met the word limit and was submitted on-time” and says that the error gives “the people [he is] running against an unfair advantage”.

Other candidates saw their names listed for positions they were not standing for or, in some cases, for two different positions. While the issues had been rectified before noon on Monday some 1000 people had voted by that time.

Votes could potentially be struck from a certain time period of the election for the Deputy President (Welfare) position following ongoing discussions of Union Court.

Voting closes at 23:59 today and results will be announced early next week.