Concrete interviews the officer candidates >page 6
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10.03.15
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Union elections open to abuse The University of East Anglia’s Official Student Newspaper
>> Computer sytem error means some students can vote in elections they should not be part of.
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>> Elections are open to multiple errors and to possible election fraud. Geri Scott Editor-in-Chief Students voting in the ongoing union elections, known as The Leadership Race, may be able to vote in the elections for various equal-opportunity officers, even if they do not self-define as members of that constituency. When students registered on ueastudent. com at the beginning of this academic year, they were asked to provide various details, including whether they self-define as a woman, as a disabled student, as LGBT+, as an international student, as an ethnic minority, or as a mature student. Only those who, for example, self-define as women should be able to vote for the Women’s Officer. But Concrete has discovered that an error with Union Cloud, the system on which ueastudent.com is run, may have opened up the electoral system to abuse. Some students have reported that, since September, their details have been reset: the answer is now “yes” to all categories. In these cases, affected students are able to vote in the election of any equal-opportunity officers. The equal-opportunity officers are defined by the bye-laws of the Union of UEA Students (UUEAS). They represent only the groups that students can self-define as when registering. The bye-laws say that these positions “shall be elected by ordinary members who self-define as members of the constituency that the equalopportunity officer represents”. Andrew Charlwood, a fourth-year pharmacy student, said: “I logged in to the union website to vote in the elections, and realised I could vote for positions I didn’t think I should be able to. As a straight, white man I don’t think I should have a say in voting for the LGBT+ Officer, the Ethnic Minorities Officer or the Women’s Officer. I didn’t cast a vote for those positions, but I thought it was really weird that I was given the option to”. Other students have told Concrete that while all self-identity fields on the union website had reset to “yes”, they were still only able to vote in the elections they were eligible for. All students are able to update their preferences on Union Cloud and therefore exclude themselves from the elections they are not in the constituency for. But for the many who simply log on to vote and assume they had set these preferences at the beginning of the year, double-checking may not cross their minds. Charlotte Hales, a third-year politics student, said: “I remember answering these questions at the beginning of the year when
venue gets mashed Photo: Flickr, mira66 I signed up to the union website, but I’ve just logged in and they’ve all been reset to “yes”. I don’t identify as LGBT+ and feel like it’s unfair on anyone who is if I can vote in the election meant for them”. There is little consistency over whether updating personal details will exclude students from elections in which they should not be able to vote. Some students have reported that once they updated their preferences they were no longer able to vote in elections which did not apply to them. Others found that they were always able to vote only in elections they were supposed to, yet all selfidentity fields had reset to “yes”. It is also very simple to update preferences and be given the opportunity to vote in the elections of equalopportunity officers, meaning that the system
is vulnerable to errors and electoral fraud. This issue was discovered late on Sunday evening: Concrete stresses that, at the time of going to press UUEAS had not yet an opportunity to fully investigate the reports. However, Holly Staynor, Welfare, Community and Diversity Officer, said: “I know that all of [the student officer team] take the autonomy of the liberation campaigns and other defined constituency groups really seriously, not only in the name of ensuring these groups are fairly represented but also because we all want to have as fair and transparent a democracy as possible. So if it was the case that we were to detect an error in the voting system, we would do everything we could to make sure that everyone gets the opportunity to vote for the officers that represent them”.