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Live! - News

Elections descend into Mayhem

Feb 26 2003 09:12

Dan L

The ICU Election results have still not been counted after a night of complaints and appeals.

Another Munkey picture that has some vague connection to the elections.

Complaints flew in left, right and centre to the elections committee yesterday evening, eventually leading to the count being delayed. After what apperared to be a rather calm day of voting, it seems that now all election results could be in doubt.

Having previously been disqualified by the Elections Committee for multiple breaches of the election rules, Ameet Bhakta appealed to an emergency meeting of the ICU Executive Committee at 6 o'clock yesterday. After a lengthy meeting the committee decided to vote 6 to 4 to uphold the decesion by the elections committee. Mr Bhakta can choose to further appeal the decision to Council if he desires.

The Elections Committee had a further 4 complaints to deal with - one allegation of irregular postering by Mustafa Arif, one complaint regarding the manning of the Wye ballot box and two regarding the impartiality of those manning the medic and Huxley ballot boxes. All of the complaints were dismissed by the Elections Committee, although one was appealed to Exec.

The Executive Committee met again late in the evening to rule on the allegation that Tom Evens, Medic President, had been campaigning for Andrew Shore (one of the Presidential candidates) while manning a ballot box. The complaint rested on several witness statements that containing differing recollections of the events that took place and while Mr Evens admitted privately telling some friends who asked how he had voted, he denied the charge of campaigning. After going into a closed session during which Mr Evens also left (despite being a member of Exec) the Executive Committee decided to uphold the decision of the Elections Committee by 11 votes to 0 (with 1 abstention). While the committee believed that Mr Evens had probably committed a serious error of judgement in engaging in such conversations, they did not believe that this constituted campaigning or would have any material effect on the results.

With the election complaints and appeals dealt with, candidates were called in by Returning Officer Sen Ganesh to hear the Elections Committee report and be asked to sign a declaration that they regarded the election as having been run constitutionally and fairly. Two candidates voiced concerns and Mustafa Arif, now one of two candidates in the running for ICU President, refused to sign the declaration on the basis that he did not believe the election had been run fairly.

Mr Arif did express a willingness to sign a different declaration that was hopefully in line with the constitutional requirements and his own conscience but the count was posponed pending his discussions with the Elections Committee over this issue.

So at the end of the night, there still hasn't been a single vote counted.

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Discussion about “Elections descend into Mayhem”

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. Ashley Brown

Feb 25 2003 20:18

When are CGCU candidate lists going up on www.cgcu.net/elections/? It would be nice to think about an election which may actually elect somebody *before* the end of term.

2. Nick Maynard

Feb 25 2003 21:28

In keeping with the general ICU theme at the moment, what on earth is up with the ICU website? It broken -_-

3. Ashley Brown

Feb 25 2003 21:35

Maybe it got disqualified...

4. Ashley Brown

Feb 25 2003 21:38

IC Radio is jamming it up - www.icradio.com seems dead so the "Now Playing" thing on the left is getting stuck. Hit stop and the page appears to the point where it would've drawn that...

5. Ashley Brown

Feb 25 2003 21:54

See:

Warning: php_hostconnect: connect failed in /www/doc_root/php/newsbox.php on line 70

Warning: file("http://icradio.com/feeds/onair.html") - Bad file descriptor in /www/doc_root/php/newsbox.php on line 70

Warning: Bad arguments to join() in /www/doc_root/php/newsbox.php on line 70

6. Richard Tang

Feb 25 2003 22:30

ha ha.

All the web people are probably all stuck in some meeting!

My login still works (from 1999) but it seems like I don't have the power to fix anything!

7. Oliver Pell

Feb 26 2003 00:08

A power shutdown in ACE building has cut off the Union building from the rest of the college network. This means that the IC Radio server is unavailable.

Power is due back at about 2am though so its not worth trying to fix it...

8. Sam

Feb 26 2003 01:01

I disagree, it's already worth fixing, however i can either:

implement a failsafe, which will wait for an interval, and if the connection hasn't worked, will gracefully exit.

of i can just disable the ICRadio feed.

Richard: sorry you have no power... live with it ;o)

9. Richard Tang

Feb 26 2003 01:16

Happy to.

10. Dan L

Feb 26 2003 02:09

The canidates for C&G election will be up soon (hopefully wednesday)

When you have around 45-50 people standing it is quite a lot of nomination papers to check...

11. Rob Park

Feb 26 2003 09:34

I hope you can organise a piss-up in a brewery... probably a lot easier than elections.

*rotfl*

12. The Rogue Sailior

Feb 26 2003 10:58

I am proud. You only appear to have cited four factual inaccuracies in the above article. It looks as though you may even have researched it! Keep up the good work. One day someone might write something worthy of the title "journalism".

13. media watch

Feb 26 2003 11:46

Felix have their usual, more terse, play on things.

STOIC have their usual, more playful, play on things.

Why did Mustafa and Katherine refuse to sign their declarations? They don't appear to be appealing or making any complaints to Council.

14. Beci

Feb 26 2003 12:40

They refused to sign them because they didn't believe that the elections had been run fairly and so refused to sign something that they "didn't believe in".

15. Mustafa Arif

Feb 26 2003 12:54

I shall make a statement by reviving my Live! column some this evening, by which time I hope to:

have signed a reworded declaration so the count can go ahead
chatted to a few people
finished off some coursework I need to hand in!

16. factual inaccuracy

Feb 26 2003 14:37

Katherine signed, the only outstanding signature is Mr Arif.

17. Beci

Feb 26 2003 14:55

On the Stoic interview, Sen said he'd wait until the Exec meeting on the 10th. Does this mean that even if Mustafa signs the paper, the vote will wait? Or is the signature the only thing that's holding it all up?

Any offers?

18. Rich Vodden

Feb 26 2003 16:27

At the moment it is only the elections committee that are holding it up. They are a group of dedicated volunteers who don't have an infinite amount of time to devote so the earliest they feel that they can effectivly and fairly run the count is wednesday afternoon. This is very frustrating for all involved but also fair. We can't expect any more peoples degrees to suffer for an election that most of us are pissed off enough with already.

19. Andy Heeps

Feb 26 2003 16:42

Resign. Run the lot again. And make the posts effective immediately. Time to cut out the malignancy.

20. ICU Admin

Feb 26 2003 17:34

If anyone cares, i've implemented a failsafe, so when the ICRadio -> ICU Webserver breaks again it won't make me look so amateur.

Sam

21. stoic

Feb 26 2003 19:39

Mustafa has now signed a reworded paper.

Watch him read out his reworded document and explain the crucial differences.

Closed This discussion is closed.