Election Coverage Roundup

The Beaver focused its coverage in todays issue on last weeks elections, even including a post-election pullout section featuring the goofiest pictures of the Sabb-elects they could find (but don’t worry, they included embarrassing pictures of the Media Group crew, too). Additionally, a somewhat mish-mashed article by Kevin Perry (presumable in his toga) and Michael Deas managed to simultaneously pat the Media Group on the back for its successful coverage of the ballot counting night and include a thematically unrelated, if important, interview with Returning Officer James Bacon on the merits of the single transferable vote scheme that was employed in the election. The statisticians on the editorial staff even got their chance to insert some graphs and figures – notably taking the opportunity to bash Hack Attack’s 36% success rate in predicting the election outcome.

The newsiest of all the stories, meanwhile, was among the shortest: the race for residences officer will be referred to the Constitution and Steering Committee (C&S) to determine whether there was any breach of campaigning rules by Emma Fischer, who received a mere 3 more votes than her opponent, Helen Roberts. According to the Beaver, if Fisher is found to have deliberately and knowingly breached the rules her candidacy could be terminated, making Roberts the Residences officer by default, although the Beaver also suggests that a rerun of the vote is another possibility. Fischer is alleged to have violated campaigning rules by adding to a form email sent out to students in the High Holborn residence (where she is the hall president) and also to have worn a campaigning t-shirt inside the library, which is against the rules. C&S is expected to make a decision this evening.