Electile dysfunction

There is an election happening within Warwick next week.

Or so rumour has it. Unless you have the Students’ Union website set as your browser’s home page, pore over every inch of newsprint in the Boar (which, of course, we hope you do) or are a candidate yourself then you can be forgiven very easily for being completely unaware that this is happening at all.

For those of you who are still in this blissful ignorance, then I will say as much as we can without having the powers that be accuse us of ruining free and fair elections: you will be able to vote online for next year’s Sabbatical Officers and a selection of part-time positions in Week 5 of this term; the elections will use the Single Transferable Vote system; a list of the candidates can be found on the third page of this paper.

It is barely exaggerating to say that this is all we are allowed to tell you. Despite being assured editorial independence from the Union, we at the Boar have our news and comment pieces carefully policed to ensure that we are not seen to be giving any candidates unbalanced coverage, either positive or negative.

This is a shame. We would never seek to endorse one or another candidate – we like to think we’re a relatively diverse group anyway, and certainly not all of us are in agreement over who to vote for – but there are interesting stories that would be good to report on. In fact, some of the things that are happening in this election are unprecedented in SU history. However, since the stories would involve specific candidates, we cannot report on them. These candidates would be seen as having undue prominence and lots of people would have a headache as to how to level the playing field again.

If it was simply the Boar that would get reprimanded for such breaches in the electoral rules then perhaps we would be rebellious and publish these reports anyway, marching valiantly through SUHQ in defence of the concept of free speech. The problem is that we simply cannot know if these candidates mentioned would be accused of campaigning through us and, despite their innocence, face punishment due to our actions.

Which leads to another point: there are strict rules stating that campaigning cannot begin until the morning of Monday, Week 5. Some of the reasons for this are perfectly understandable – none of us want to be bombarded with flyers, kitchen visits and lecture shouts for too long a period – but the problem is that given the busy state of most students at this time of year we simply do not have time to properly engage with the democratic process in this time. To read so many manifestos, assess different candidates’ positions and make up our mind based on reasons other than friendship or vanity takes time that many of us don’t have.

If we as were given more scope to engage with the debates, more opportunity to hear the interesting stories and policies of the candidates and faced with less red tape then perhaps the proportion of students voting would be higher than last year’s 22.5 percent which, though higher than many other SUs, is still lower than it could be. But for now rules are rules, so get ready to vote.