Disappointing turnout for Union elections

The recent Students’ Union elections had a disappointing turnout, with few people voting to elect their year representatives to student council. Just 1,371 people voted this year, down from 1,621 last year, which was a 131 percent increase over the year before that.

Laveen Ladharam, recently elected to office as third year student councillor, believes that the lack of publicity was the reason. “Fundamentally, the reason for the low turnout was that we (rightly) were not allowed to spend a lot of money on the elections. It’s not like the sabbatical elections which take up the whole campus.”

In comparison to the elections for sabbatical officers, which take place in week five of the second term and have a huge presence on campus, the student council elections are relatively low-funded, and therefore suffer from less publicity. It is believed the elections group has difficulty in allocating the funds available for promoting student council, as the majority of funds go towards the sabbatical officer elections, the campaigns for which last several weeks and are of necessity more personality-based.

Sabbatical Officer for Democracy and Communications Chris Luck said: “We used leaflets, Facebook, e-mails, posters and the Bubble to advertise the recent elections. We also had a presence at the Fresher’s fair and most of the communication tools at our disposal were free.

“The lack of voter turnout is an anomaly. The general feedback from kitchen touring revealed a lack of awareness and interest from freshers.”

A third-year Politics student who wished to remain anonymous said: “The student council has in the past been used by people who have an axe to grind or an issue they want to promote, whereas a large majority of the student population is not hugely interested in the issues that affect their union.”

Despite the lack of turnout, the first student council meeting of the year was one of the best attended in Warwick history. Luck also pointed to the fact that the SU website has had an incredible 50 percent increase in hits in comparison to last year. He added that postgraduate voting numbers and candidate numbers were both “up considerably”.

In response to the turnout issue, the Union is assessing what went wrong and plans to devote more resources to ensure that the 2011 union elections will be far more successful.