As mentioned above, every group needs to hold elections yearly.
For Societies, Volunteering Groups, and Student Media the Student Engagement Team will set them up for you and communicate timelines with you and your members.
During the nomination period, candidates can upload their manifesto on the website and once voting opens all members can see the full candidate list and cast their votes. Your staff support will then count the elections for you and publish the results.
If you want to have the results published at a specific date (for example to align with an election party), please contact your staff support well in advance to organise this.
We will normally contact you about elections in Semester 2, but if you have any questions, please email your staff support.
If you are a sports club, please email su-sportsadministrator@qmul.ac.uk for more information about your elections.
How do they work?
There are two main parts to an election: a nominations period and a voting period.
Nominations Period: This is when the positions you are electing are open for applications. Members of your group* put themselves forward for a role (known as standing for a role), often with a statement of why they want to run, why they should be elected, and what they’ll do if elected. This is also known as a manifesto.
Voting Period: Once nominations are closed a candidate list is published so you can see who is running for which role. You may decide to hold hustings or a candidate question time, which gives members of your group an opportunity to meet the candidates and see how they compare with one another. Your members then cast a vote and the person with the most votes gets elected.
*please note that in order to be eligible to run for a role, the member must be a paid member (this does not apply for Volunteering Groups), and a student during the whole time they are in this position if elected.
There are many benefits of running online elections, such as making it more accessible to all members and ensuring only current students who are group members can actually vote.
Running online elections does not stop you from holding an AGM if you decide to do this: you can always host one so people can come forward to run for a position and explain why they want to run, but then the voting is moved online. Just make sure that everyone is treated fairly.
We use Alternative Transferable Voting, which is a type of proportional voting which takes greater account to people’s preferences in who they want elected. For a full explanation of how this works, you can watch this video.
To answer some of the most common questions and give you some more details, we have created a simple election guide. We recommend you read this before your elections to ensure you have all the information necessary.
Election Guide
Watch video