A number of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) class representatives have been wrongfully elected to their positions, as a result of a technical failure with an online voting system used by the union’s Electoral Commission.
A press statement released this evening by Sadhbh Brennan, who chairs the Electoral Commission, said that the mistake happened as a result of a “technical difficulty” with a system that was created by Trinity students and first trialled last year after two years in development.
The statement said that the error “is very disappointing for us as a Union, as we had been working towards an otherwise highly successful election period. We informed the affected students as soon as was possible, and have put the necessary steps in place to ensure they are supported”.
In a press statement, Daniel O’Reilly, one of the developers, said: “This is unequivocally not the EC’s fault. [They] approved a trial of a brand new system.”
“We had run lots of smaller trials running up to this”, he said, “but this particular issue could have only ever been discovered in a trial of this size.”
The union’s statement admitted that the error could be “discouraging” for the students affected. The mistake, it said, was “certainly the last thing we wanted to happen. We will be heavily monitoring our use of online voting in the future”.
Two of the developers, O’Reilly and Matthew Henry, will be giving a presentation at the first meeting of council on Tuesday to explain the technical issues that occurred.
It was hoped that facilitating the electing of representatives online would increase voter turnout and encourage student engagement with their representatives.
“Having put two years of work into it, the developers were confident in the system and had reassured us of its competency”, the statement said.
This year, a record 790 students were nominated for the position of class representative. The role, which TCDSU describes as “five mini-sabbatical officers rolled into one”, involves representatives attending and speaking on behalf of their class at council, as well as organising social events or keeping students informed on developments within the council.
Last year, then-TCDSU communications and marketing officer Paraic McLean defended the practice of handing out sweets to those in attendance at council, as well use of social media during council sessions.
Speaking at a council meeting, McLean said: “Every single one of you in this room is a volunteer. All of you are giving up your time to be here. Giving out sweets is the least we can do.”
This year TCDSU Education Officer Niamh McCay announced that the Academic Senate, which runs alongside the council, would not convene this year.
The Senate was set up to reduce the workload of class representatives, but during its two-year pilot-term, several senators were also sitting class representatives themselves.
