PMSO: Voting Statistics

a

Just for information, here are the voting statistics for my recent election.

221 votes were cast in total. I therefore needed 105 votes to get elected.

12 students chose to spoil their ballots, 40 students voted for R.O.N (Re-Open Nominations) and 169 students voted for me - therefore I was elected the Postgraduate & Mature Students' Officer (PMSO).

Obviously, 221 votes is nowhere near good enough. Especially considering there are 7,500 postgraduates at this University and even more undergraduate mature students. This is mostly my fault - I should have campaigned more despite my other commitments. Although, I also suspect that students are not even aware that they have had a PMSO in previous years.

I hope to change that this year.

I am also pleased to announce that we have seven postgraduate Guild Councillors this year.

Law Postgraduate Place
Alexander Zatman

Government and Society Postgraduate Place
Benjamin Jackson

Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences Postgraduate Place
Siobhan Dunne

Business School Postgraduate Places
Charlotte ‘Winnie’ Wyn

Svetlana Ten ‘Lana Ten’

Valentin Brescan

Ola Dantis

This is certainly an improvement on the three that we had last year. However, it once more indicates that postgraduates are under-represented at Guild Council.

I knew many postgraduates who were interested in running but unfortunately the bye-election was promoted on the website and nowhere else. They therefore appear to have missed their chance. I will look into arranging a second bye-election to allow these students to participate (this really shouldn't be too hard as these seats are rarely, if ever, contested so we won't even have to go as far as ballot stations.)

I'll bring a motion to Guild Council soon.

a