The Guardian: Ministers back voting reforms

With the news that the government is tabling a motion to switch to the Alternative Transferable Vote (ATV) election system, we’ll be taking a look over the next week at how the UCLan Students’ Union system of Single Transferable Vote (STV) works, the drama it’s caused in the past, and assessing whether it’s the best method available for student elections.

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?