As 10 days of campaigning and a week of voting came to an end on Monday, 21st March, it led to a climax in the Tower Bar where the results of the SU elections were announced — but the winner of vice-president activities won’t be announced until next week after it was suspended “pending review”.
Over 1,921 people voted this year, which beat the SU’s aim to get 15% of the student population to vote.
The part-time position of non-portfolio went to two of the three candidates, Kelly Nicholls and Gemma Cobby. Liberation officer went to Maryim Saghir who had no opposition. The newly elected RAG officer is Samuel Whewall.
The full-time positions was where some of the shocks from the night came. As Kayleigh Taylor was the only candidate running for vice-president welfare then she won with 1047 votes.
Down to the voting system used by the SU, which is single transferable vote, it was too hard to predict who would win the position of vice-president academic affairs. That showed in reality as it took five stages to get a candidate to have gained enough votes and pass the quota of votes.
In the first round RON was eliminated, and shockingly the first person to be eliminated was Joe Hicks who had received a total of 139 votes. The second person to be eliminated was Jack Dobson-Smith, followed by David Anderson. After these people had been eliminated there was enough votes for Jennine Fox to pass the quota and to win the title.
Before the winner of president had been announced it was quite obvious who had won the title as when Ary Sharif’s name was mentioned there was a huge scream from the audience in the Tower Bars. He won the title with 1176 votes in comparison to Dan Derricott’s 474 votes.
The new officers do not take on the roles until the summer.