Election financial incentives

Date embedded: February 2022

Completed

QMSU notes:

1. In the QMSU 2015 elections, societies were incentivized to turn out to vote:
   
   'As an incentive to encourage student groups to promote the elections, we’ve decided to offer prizes to the student groups that obtain the highest proportional voter turnout in elections. There are three prizes. Student groups with 10 – 50 members will compete for a £100 prize, student groups with 51 – 150 members will compete for a £200 prize, and student groups with over 151 members will compete for a £300 prize. Categories will be based on membership numbers of groups at the close of elections.’

    

2. QMSU did this without proper consultation of student council
3. Student turn out this year was lower than last year

QMSU believes:

1. Paying societies does not increase voter turn out
2. Financial incentives encourage student engagement for the wrong reasons, ignoring candidate manifestos and promoting an attitude of complacency towards QMSU elections.

QMSU resolves:

1. In future years QMSU will not provide financial incentives to student groups and/or individual students for votes.