Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) election candidates Greg Arrowsmith and Ben Cummins have submitted a joint proposal to the Electoral Commission (EC) to extend voting in this year’s sabbatical officer elections by one day, following reports of technical difficulties with the online voting system.
There have been numerous reports of people being unable to cast their ballots due to technical difficulties with the online voting system from EVIABI ltd.
Online voting in this year’s entirely online TCDSU elections opened last night at 8pm after Halls hustings and is due to close at 4pm tomorrow.
In a statement to The University Times, Arrowsmith, one of two candidates for ents officer, said: “A number of candidates have put a joint proposal to the EC, in light of the serious problems many students are finding in their attempts to vote, to extend voting until Friday.”
“We’re also proposing that candidates can use their social media accounts to promote voting outside of [campaign] hours, but for this activity to be limited to promoting voting only. This would help voting to be spread throughout the day, rather than bottlenecking during campaign hours, as has been the case the last few days.”
He added that “the registration numbers were fantastic, but unless given more time to vote due to the technical difficulties, the real voting figures will only be a fraction of the number of students registered.”
In a press statement, Zara Finn, campaign manager for Cummins who is one of three presidential candidates, said: “Basically I think that candidates spent so much time focusing on making sure students were registered to vote and it’s disheartening to see that now students are struggling to [cast] their vote – it takes away from the union’s focus to increase student engagement if the student body are now unable to engage effectively by electing their union.”
In a tweet earlier today, the union confirmed that people were having difficulties accessing their ballots, and said that “the servers will hopefully settle down in the next few hours so that everyone can cast their vote”.
In a email statement to The University Times, Matthew Henry of EVIABI Ltd, explained that: “From a technical standpoint, although there has been significant slowdown due to the heavy traffic the system has been closely monitored by the EVIABI team and there has been no loss of voter data.”
This year, a total of 6,251 students had registered to vote in the Trinity College Dublin Student Union (TCDSU) elections by the time registration closed at 6pm yesterday.
The Electoral Commission did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
If all registered students vote, this year’s sabbatical elections would see a vast increase in turnout compared to last year.
Last year, just 2,521 students voted in the presidential race – down 800 from the previous two years. The high number of students registered to vote this year indicates a major reversal of this trend.
Last August TCDSU hired an e-voting system that facilitates the single-transferable vote, signing a two-year contract with EVIABI Ltd.
The contract cost TCDSU €17,000 for the two years which covers the running of all elections in this format, including elections with bodies outside TCDSU that the union have a memorandum agreement with.
Matt McCann and Jane Cook also contributed reporting to this piece.
