The Big Elections 2013: the race is on

On 3 March at 23:59 nominations for this year’s Big Elections closed. These are the elections for a large number of positions at Imperial College Union. All of the Sabbatical positions will be elected by the student body of Imperial, with the Union hoping to beat last year’s record turnout. All of the manifestos for the candidates can be found from page 13 onwards, or online at imperialcollegeunion.org/elections. Imperial students must then submit votes ranking their preference for each candidate with a single transferrable vote system. There is also the option to vote for RON, which stands for Re-Open Nominations. If RON wins the election is re-run.

Candidates had to submit their 250 word manifestos online. By the time of publication, they will have been campaigning for nearly a whole working week, with voting opening on Friday 8 March at 12:00. On Thursday 7 March, the candidates took part in hustings. This was in the form of a live STOIC broadcast called “Meet the Candidates”, which is now available on the Union’s Elections website. This did have some technical difficulties at the start, and had some issues with lagging all the way throughout. Voting will close on 15 March at 12:00, with the results being announced in Metric that night for the Results Party. Allowing candidates to celebrate or drown sorrows. This means that next week will be when campaigning is, in all likelihood, taken up a notch. Throughout the election process, the Union will be blogging the election. This involves updating with photos and tweets of candidates.

The Union has revamped the look of the promotional material and has the live stats website up once more. This will be showing voting stats from the moment voting opens.

This year has seen some changes in the rules. To stand for a position, regardless of the position, there was only one seconder required. The Big Elections website however made some believe that 20 seconders were needed for the Sabbatical positions. This was due to the code that showed the capping not being changed. Another change was that the Returning Officer for the Elections is an external, which is standard practice at most other unions. Although the Deputy Returning Officers are staff members at the Union. They have said that they are interested in the democratic legitimacy of the Union. Candidates no longer have to submit their campaign material to the Returning Officer for approval. Instead it is a system whereby people put out there material and can then get into trouble for it at a later time.

The complaints procedure has also been changedfrom last year. This year, only complaints submitted via an online form can be upheld. This form requires complainants to find the relevant code for their complaint.

In the Initial Candidates Meeting the Returning Officer reminded everyone of the importance of good campaigning. He said: “This is an election not a selection”.

As with every year, this year the election has already had something in the way of controversy. There is one candidate, Forhad Matin, who is standing for every single position available to him, although he has only submitted a manifesto for Union President, RCSU President and Chemsoc President, and he has not submitted a photo for any role.

One candidate for Union President, Christopher Kaye, had a complaint lodged against him because of the poster he used. The complaint was regarding the language used. The poster said his main manifesto points of selling cigarettes at the Union and putting a photo of the Queen behind the bar in smaller writing with “Fags at the Union”, “Queen at the Union”, and “Not a prat” in larger writing (see below). The message from the Returning Officers, which was a formal warning, stated: “Your poster… contains offensive language (“fags”, “prat” and, in this context, “queen”). The candidates’ pack and publicity policy clearly state that “all campaign material must not contain offensive language, contain implied offensive language, or be libelous in nature”.” It then said: “Please remove any physical and online publicity with this language immediately.” Chris Kaye rejected the complaint saying: “The language used is not offensive in context.” He said that “fag” was referencing cigarettes and that “Queen” referenced the Queen, saying “I am Chair of History Society and, in my opinion, the involvement of the Monarchy in the College’s history is very important. If I cannot refer to the ‘Queen’ then my ability to express myself is severely restricted”. He said that the word prat is “informal and not offensive according to [the] Cambridge Dictionary” He says he modified his posters, and that the Returning Officers never replied to him about his points in a way that he deemed satisfactory. He has since withdrawn from the election, giving his primary reason as the amount of work he has to do. He added: “I’m just dispondant with the whole thing, and don’t want things to turn as nasty as things did with Abdul last year.” When asked about the posters he said: “It might’ve been better had I been given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to keep my poster as it was, and let democracy run its course.” There were allegations that Kaye’s posters were being torn down, with a report from one of Felix’s Comment Editors that he saw someone rip down a poster, and that two posters disappeared within minutes of him walking past the same spot. Kaye later satirized the whole campaigning process with a Facebook group “Chris Kaye for finishing his computational labs”.

For President, there are now three candidates left with manifestos and pictures, and one with a manifesto only. The other candidates did not submit a picture or manifesto.

There was also a glitch in the system of the online manifestos. One candidate for Deputy President (Clubs & Societies) had a manifesto that was over 400 words long. This problem was fixed the next day. As well as that, there have been the usual people posting in pre-existing groups. Plus several candidates wanted to edit manifestos as well as one candidate wanting to have their manifesto put up, as they missed the deadline. It was ruled that everyone had the same restrictions and that nobody can edit or put up manifestos now.

The position of Deputy President (Education) has only two candidates facing off against RON, with one not submitting a photoor manifesto. The same goes for Deputy President (Finance & Services), with one candidate withdrawing.

With everything set in place, the elections are now well and truly underway.

To vote: go to this link.