‘How to make people vote’ - be different

Polly Toynbee writes in The Guardian today about ‘How to make people vote’ and it’s a question that the Union has pondered and no doubt the election candidates are pondering even more.

The main thrust of the article is that voters want a choice. Everyone’s competing for the politically correct middle ground, but actually if people had a clear choice turnout would go up. We don’t all want to vote for three Mr or Mrs X’s, we want a Y and a Z to pick from.

The lesson for candidates, pin your colours to a mast and make voters believe that you can climb to the top of it. Don’t just follow the herd.

e-voting demo shows simplicity

You may/may not have heard that this year’s student election is going to be run online. It will be entirely e-voting. This is expected to change the entire nature of the elections as candidates will no longer just be able to stand in the Union/Foster building and know who has voted.

Votes can come at anytime between 9 AM Monday April 14 and 12 midnight on Thursday April 18, and they can come from anywhere. The ballot box is now any PC that has access to the Internet and someone who has a log-in and password for a groupwise email account.

You can take a look at a demo of what the e-voting system will be like on the electoral reform services site (you need to select the Single Transferable Vote option), obviously it doesn’t include the UCLan branding names etc but gives a good indication of how the system works.

The question is now, how do you campaign when your electorate are everywhere?

Nominations open and secret campaigning begins

Nominations have had a week of being open and so far there haven’t been many applicants, but this is no surprise as we know from tradition there is usually a last minute flood.

It’s looking hopeful that each sabbatical position will be contested this year - which always helps as election when there’s more than one person standing.

The Union has made the ruling that no public campaigning until after the candidates briefing, this includes Facebook groups under its ruling. This seems fair, but it hasn’t stopped the setting up of facebook groups on the secret mode. This is a good way for candidates to gather together supporters and dish out tasks for people to do.

The question is, will supporters on facebook groups translate into votes? No matter how online democracy becomes there’s no substitute for a well thought out face to face election plan. If people don’t know you, they won’t vote for you.