The Election Process

Are popular elections, which determine the students that will serve on ANUSA, the best system of electing representatives? We don't think that this is necessarily the case. Read on and find out why.

The way things are
As discussed in Our Campaign, the democratic process currently in place to elect student reps has several characteristics. In the second semester of each year, 43 positions are made available for students to contest in open elections.

Technically, the barriers to entry are low – any student can nominate to run in an election. In addition, groups of students may band together and run as a ‘ticket’. At ANU tickets tend to be prevalent, as more manpower is available for planning, funds, campaigning, and so on. In addition, tickets can draw on the collective networks and popularity of their members in order to attract more votes.

Voting occurs over the course of four days in the second semester, and prior to this candidates will launch advertising campaigns and host events. Election week can be a daunting process for those not running in elections, as candidates gather around polling areas and try to canvass for votes.

There are election regulations, which regulate candidate behaviour during the process. These range from individual and ticket spending limits, to appropriate areas for canvassing for votes, and so on. These can be found in the ANUSA constitution.

Problems with this approach
At first glance, this arrangement may seem to be fairly innocuous. However, it has led to several problems, particularly in the way they have been conducted in the past several years.

We take serious issue with what has ended up being the closed nature of ANUSA elections. This stems from several areas:

Insufficient knowledge: many interested students feel that the only way to run for elections is to run with a ticket. As a result, many interested, enthusiastic or capable students do not participate in elections as a result of not being approached by a ticket.

Ticket formation is closed: the process of ticket formation is often done secretively. To avid student politicians, this is done in order to prevent rival tickets from stealing ideas, people, or even the ticket name. Whilst there may be some truth in this fear, we think that this process only solidifies the very negative stereotype of ANUSA being an inaccessible in-group of student politicians.

Ticket selection is very specific: tickets aren’t just focussing on developing good ideas an policies, but are also out to win an election. This means that students selected or invited by ticket convenors to run in the elections must not only be capable, but are ideally also popular and well connected. As a result, the latter two are valued quite highly, and will, unfortunately, rule out many talented students because of their inability to attract votes during the election period.

Ticket selection relies very strongly on personal networks: recruitment is often done on the basis of members’ networks. Friends, classmates, college friends and so on are prime targets for recruitment. This means that in order to run with a ticket, one will have to be in the right circles and know the right people. Combined with what is typically a very strong emphasis on college residents, this mentality excludes a great majority of students at the ANU.

As a whole, the process of ticket formation that has dominated ANUSA elections excludes a very significant proportion of students. Indeed, we would estimate that the number of “candidate worthy” students hovers between 150-200 – an appallingly small proportion of ANU’s total undergraduate population.

This contributes very strongly to the perception that ANUSA is an insular in-group of student politicians – a far cry from the openness of its democratic ideals. By excluding many of ANU’s other students the process has the effect of alienating students that do not get to participate.

Do
We have already made attempts to address some of these problems – for instance, we encourage students who are interested in running for a position in ANUSA to run with us. We have also made as much of our campaign process as open as possible, in order to better work with and engage the “ordinary student”. See the Our Campaign section for more details.

However, attempting to set a precedent for openness in campaigns is not enough. To this, we propose several other solutions: A public education programme on the functions of ANUSA, including the electoral process, is key in removing the in-group stigma of ANUSA and preventing “ordinary students” from feeling alienated. As many reforms as is possible with elections, we feel that this particular system is terminally flawed, as there is no impetus to meaningfully engage with the wider student body. They Sydney-based newDemocracy Foundation helps plan and implement alternatives to elections, and we would like to work with them to devise a more meaningful and engaging election process.
 *  Solution  : public education programmes
 *  Solution  : work with newDemocracy in changing the electoral process.