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Turnout Breaks Records

Nov 17 2006 09:31

Ashley Brown

As voting drew to a close, turnout was the highest in memory.

Yes campaign in the foreground, No campaign with Krispy Kremes in the background

Turnout for the NUS referendum was at 28.4% just before 5pm yesterday, making it the largest percentage turnout in memory, beating the 26.8% from 2002. The turnout terms of pure numbers is huge, standing at 3,762 just before 5pm. The last referendum saw turnout of 2,749.

Both sides have told Live! they are exhausted and pleased the voting period was lowered from five days to three days. Voting was dropping off yesterday evening and passers-by on the walkway seemed equally fatigued by the referendum. The earlier chemical incident very nearly brought everything to a halt, but the section of walkway outside the JCR remained open.

Returning officer Jon Matthews is also believed to be fatigued, having dealt with many complaints over the course of the last fortnight and spending Wednesday morning impounding Guildsheet.

Turnout figures and results will be released shortly after 7pm this evening.

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Discussion about “Turnout Breaks Records”

The comments below are unmoderated submissions by Live! readers. The Editor accepts no liability for their content, nor for any offence caused by them. Any complaints should be directed to the Editor.

1. Cristina

Nov 17 2006 10:40

"Shortly after 7pm this evening" means "five minutes past seven" or will we have to wait several days (a day is not too long in a year, right?) to get them?

2. John

Nov 17 2006 11:15

Are there any non-electronic ballots? It strikes me that if all votes are in by midnight, and everything is electronic, there's no real reason results can't be published by 0:01am. Assuming the returning officer doesn't have issues...

3. Cristina

Nov 17 2006 11:28

There shouldn't be any non-electronic votes.

Maybe they need all this time to make pretty excel graphs, or there might be some returning officer-y things to do (maybe finishing dealing with complaints?).

4. Ashley Brown

Nov 17 2006 12:16

The results will be announced at 7pm, or shortly thereafter in dBs. I hope to have the results up within a few minutes of the announcement (the joys of wifi!).

The leaders of the Yes and No campaigns have to sign a form saying it is was a fair referendum, which I believe both are doing about now. Announcing results at 7pm is a pretty good way of drawing people to the bars on a Friday evening...

5. Cristina

Nov 17 2006 13:01

Because you really need excuses to draw people to bars on Friday evenings.. :-)

I'll be checking the Live! in the evening for more updates.

6. Ashley Brown

Nov 17 2006 13:18

Keep an eye out next week for an article discussing why people need to be attracted to the bar on Friday...

7. Cristina

Nov 17 2006 13:31

If the bar is da Vinci's, it's because the new style (mainly the wall colour for me). I've heard it described as "motorway services" and "hospital canteen chic".

8. Returning Officer

Nov 17 2006 15:26

The result will be announced in da Vinci's rather than dBs.

There are returning officer-y things to do and I am still doing them. Not only do the campaign team leaders have to sign that they are happy for the count to go ahead, we actually need to do the count itself (which takes a lot longer than just one minute unfortunately!) and I also need to check that there were no issues with the technology and so on.

It would be possible to release the result earlier than 1900 hrs, but there wouldn't be as many people around really so I felt it better to have a slightly later announcement when there will be more people present. With the number of people voting in this referendum, it is clearly important to a lot of people so I felt it only fair to make the announcement at a time those people should be able to make.

I also didn't chose to hold the announcement in the bar to get people in there, quite the opposite, I chose to make the announcement where I knew people would be...

And finally, as for the returning officer having issues, right now I feel that a lot of people would accuse me of having issues (and some of them probably have thirteen turns with which they would like to 'solve' them!)...

Jon Matthews

NUS Referendum Returning Officer

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