SU Election results

tolosenc

Orlaith Foley's in for Welfare.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Was she the one who thought flying the Irish flag was an important issue?

Moorsy

Hugh Sullivan elected by 500 votes

Total poll?

jamesnp

That was close enough for Edu. Possibility of a recount?

-jp

Stargal

But Moorsy said Hugh got it by 500 votes. That's not close. Was that a mistake?

jamesnp

Oh, I heard 50...? Anyone better able to confirm numbers?

dubsrule87

Apparently, a recount has been called in the Ents race

Open to correction, but it appears that when Cillian Gray was eliminated, his transfers put Nick Longworth one vote ahead of Dave Byrne!!

xeduCat

Yup that's apparently where it's at. Good luck to the counters and candidates for what is going to be a stressful few minutes (or hours?) sorting that out

dubsrule87

xeduCat wrote: »

Good luck to the counters and candidates for what is going to be a stressful few minutes (or hours?) sorting that out

"A stressful few hours" seems to be fairly accurate - the Ents recount was so different to the first count, that they have decided to start the count all over again from the beginning

jamesnp

Recount of Ents was so far off the original count that it's been decided to restart the Ents count from the beginning. Cillian/Nick/Dave are all back in the running.

Edit, whoops SimulPost

-jp

Stargal

How much of a difference was there in the second count? Are you talking tens or hundreds?

jamesnp

They didn't say. However, Cillian was "a couple of hundred" behind, so it probably won't affect him too much. I think he'll still be eliminated.

-jp

Thirdfox

Any word on Pres and Dep Pres?

jamesnp

Neither will begin till after Ents is completed.

Thirdfox

Okay, thanks for the quick reply - I'm off to bed then. Hope to read all about it in the morning.

Bogger

I blame Treebeard.

Stargal

/hums, taps fingers on desk.

zuchum

any news?? please tell me longworth won??

scruttocks

funny how our minds work zuchum... I should be sleeping. Regretful byrne voter, hammered.

Ling

Does anyone have the final results...votes polled, spoils and all that jazz?

Scarinae

I've heard that Cathal Reilly won President - no idea about Dep Pres, Ents or anything to do with vote numbers!

Jonathan

Fishie wrote: »

I've heard that Cathal Reilly won President - no idea about Dep Pres, Ents or anything to do with vote numbers!

Heard that too..

Ron DMC

Final results

Welfare: Orlaith Foley
Education: Hugh Sullivan
Ents: Nick Longworth
Deputy President: Seamus Conboy
President: Cathal Reilly.

I'm sure someone will post up more accurate numbers. I just don't remember (should have wrote them down).

manicmonoliths

Are we still waiting for confirmation on Ents? Nick won by 1 (could have been 2) vote after a full recount.

Nick winning would make my year!

RATM

I think what would be more interesting than the results is the turnout percentage.
Wasn't it something ridiculously low last year like in the high twenties ?
There was an interesting article in the IT recently on USI which stated that students nowadays are more interested in getting their first Opel Astra than student activism.
Must be a sign of the times but doesn't bode very well for when the Govt tries to introduce full fees, the student bodies will be pretty much toothless if they can only claim to represent such a small percentage of students.
If turnout is in the twenties doesn't it just make the whole SU election thing a popularity contest among less than a third of students ?
And why oh why has no president never introduced e-voting by email or even txt- wouldnt this help bolster turnout ?
Just my sixpence......

xeduCat

I think e-voting is still under discussion - certainly has been mentioned a number of times and I think a trial was carried out last year or the year before.

Turnout's not too bad - when I was involved I did a class-by-class analysis of turnout and in a year where the turnout was similar to this year, the headline figure of 25% was more like 60% of full-time campus undergraduates and .001% of postgraduates and that sort of thing. Postgrads are also members of the GSU and tend not to pay much attention to the SU; similarly, students that are also represented by local students' unions in affiliated colleges or who are registered TCD students but only spend one or two days a month on campus (certain part-time courses) have extremely low turnouts. Obviously it's important to try and ensure that there is interest and participation in all areas, but the turnout figure masks a more complex situation - and it's quite encouraging that undergraduate turnout (and the SU spends a lot of its time dealing with undergrad issues) is high. I think your point about e-voting is important as it may help to increase turnout in off-campus or part-time constituencies; though in the case of the postgraduates (about 4,000 of the 15,000 students), I think that's unlikely to change all that much given the double-representation and the perception that a lot of postgrads have that they aren't even SU members - for example, the weekly message sent by the SU president only goes to undergrad students.

Ron DMC

RATM wrote: »

I think what would be more interesting than the results is the turnout percentage.
Wasn't it something ridiculously low last year like in the high twenties ?
There was an interesting article in the IT recently on USI which stated that students nowadays are more interested in getting their first Opel Astra than student activism.
Must be a sign of the times but doesn't bode very well for when the Govt tries to introduce full fees, the student bodies will be pretty much toothless if they can only claim to represent such a small percentage of students.
If turnout is in the twenties doesn't it just make the whole SU election thing a popularity contest among less than a third of students ?
And why oh why has no president never introduced e-voting by email or even txt- wouldnt this help bolster turnout ?
Just my sixpence......

iirc the valid poll for most races was over 3700, turnout of maybe 3800, 3900 when you include spoils.

Massive Hamilton vote this year. Which is certainly reflected in the results.

As for e-voting, as xeducat says it was indeed tested lasted year (and quite successfully I thought), but a full rollout will require a lot more planning.

Was told by a little (hairy) fly that turnout broke 4,000 and that Ents came down to just 3 votes.

Randomness

i heard one vote separates ENTS. agh that's crazy!!

well done to all those elected etc. and commiserations to those who were not.

also fair play to all the campaigns teams and their hard work over the last while.

Indeed. Congrats everyone who ran - it's heartbreaking if you didn't get it, but it's certainly an experience (although if you didn't win chances are you wouldn't believe me right now).

And of course, well done everyone who won. First time breaking 4,000 votes I assume?

tolosenc

Largest turnout ever is what I heard. Longworth got it by 2 after being recounted when he had won by one. Man that was tight...

Conboy had the largest winning margin, something like 1100, or so I hear...

Ron DMC

obl wrote: »

Largest turnout ever is what I heard. Longworth got it by 2 after being recounted when he had won by one. Man that was tight...

Conboy had the largest winning margin, something like 1100, or so I hear...

Yep. That's how it went. I thought it was gonna be a lot closer ('it' being dep pres, not ents).

shay_562

Can't believe quite how much Conboy won by. I thought he'd take it, but never thought he'd do it by such a huge margin.

And I'm feeling pretty bad about my Treebeard vote right about now...

clairetighe

Enough rumours! Here's the official results from the night:

PRESIDENT: Cathal Reilly (2124)
DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Seamus Conboy (1979)
EDUCATION: Hugh Sullivan (2052)
WELFARE: Orlaith Foley (2154)
ENTS: Nicholas Longworth (1704)

Total turnout of voters: 4018


The full breakdown is posted on www.therecord.ie and www.tcdsu.org

Crazypaddy

A lot of people are understandably upset with the ENTS election result . But i think people should learn from this in many ways as people have not in recent years


People without much experience can win if they are a nice person and talk to people and should not be interrogated or put off for running as in this case it could come back a bite you in the backside.

The hustings have almost no impact and should be reformed , only the campaign teams attend them , there should be some Web 2.0 aspect to the election like videos of the candidates speeches or interview can be posted on the tcd local page so the true quality's can be exposed and not just there t-shirt.leaflet and poster making ability's .

As a corollary of the last point there is no point over-promoting the election as with more voters you get a larger percentage of votes whereby the decision is made randomly or uninformed.(1 and a half weeks may be too short for the large number)
Loosing by 2 votes sucks , but the fact that if this election took part with TCDSU rules and not IRISH rules there would be room for an appeal.
I could say more but TCDSU only has it's self to blame if it was in fact a result they where not expecting.

If anybody is offended by this sweeping statement my apology's

xebec

Why the need for all the bold?

Thanks for posting the results Claire.

Crazypaddy

but As You Don't Like It (edit ) !!!

Crazypaddy

Crazypaddy wrote: »

Loosing by 2 votes sucks , but the fact that if this election took part with TCDSU rules and not IRISH rules there would be room for an appeal.

I could say more but TCDSU only has it's self to blame if it was in fact a result they where not expecting.

If anybody is offended by this sweeping statement my apology's

Any chance you can go into further detail?

Crash

Its a self admitted sweeping statement, of course not!

Crazypaddy

A number of votes had treebeard No1 and Dave No2

• By Irish election rules apparently this could be appealed (as any mark in the box beside someones name can be brought in to question)
• But by TCDSU rules they are considered spoils.

Confusion over this lengthened the suffering of the two students until it was decided that there was no room for appeal down that avenue.

xeduCat

I've tallied or represented candidates at five "Irish elections" and been candidate, electoral commission secretary and returning officer at three successive "SU elections" and I can assure you that such a spoil would be treated similarly. (Speaking hypothetically of course as I haven't inspected the ballot papers referred to)

In a normal election as well as an SU election, spoils are looked at but the same rule applies, a first preference for a write-in candidate is a spoil as per section 118 of the Electoral Act 1992 (the SU rules are basically a slightly modified version of the Electoral Act). Indeed in my experience of arguing with a returning officer any writing on the paper tends to disqualify (votes for 'Dustin', statements of 'Under Protest', etc) although sometimes you can win it on an argument.

In a normal election, if a candidate votes 1, 2, 3, 5, the vote is valid as far as 3 but not after. If there's no clear first preference for a valid candidate the ballot paper is rejected and 99 times out of a 100 that will be final. Also, you can only appeal to the courts on specific legal points, the decision of the returning officer on spoil definitions is final in virtually all cases. So I'm not sure what method of 'appeal' is missing from the SU situation - there are lots of avenues in the SU, probably as comprehensive as a real election - and I don't think there are specific differences between the Electoral Act and the SU rules (IIRC, Schedule 3 of the SU Constitution) which are based on the former.