I have received a statement from the Returning Officer and the Election Committee, in response to my complains. My response is also included here.

Statement regarding July 2009 By-election.

The election committee has considered two complaints about the inclusion of No Confidence as an option where multiple candidates were standing for election. This was not strictly in accordance with the VUWSA constitution.

The election committee has noted that this has happened in past by-elections, with minimal impact. Subsequently, the election committee is of the opinion that the influence on this by-election is minimal, and the results stand.

The error was made by an external entity which VUWSA engages to conduct online voting. All paper ballots – which were generated by the returning officer – were correct. The election committee has instructed the returning officer to ensure that this does not happen for future elections.

Jeremy Greenbrook-Held, Amanda Hill, and Karen Price

VUWSA Election Committee

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Dear Returning Officer,

Thank you for your reply.

However, I find your response entirely inadequate and in fact believe it to be an insult to democracy within VUWSA.

I make the following points:

As the returning officer, your job is to carry out the election according to the VUWSA constitution. This has not been done as the electronic ballot is clearly not complaint with the constitution,

As the returning officer, your job is to count the votes in the election. This has not been done as my votes for no confidence in the xxx and xxx positions have not been counted.

As the returning officer, your job is to report the votes in the election. This has not been done as the number of votes for no confidence have not been reported for xxx and xxx and xxx.

Here is a new email that I have sent to the Returning Officer of the current VUWSA By-Election:

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Dear Returning Officer,

I wish to first highlight my concern that I have not yet received a reply to my complaint, especially given that the elections are due to close quite soon.

Secondly, I wish to add a further complaint, in that there are two different ballot papers for this election.

As highlighted in my previous email, the electronic ballot paper includes no confidence in all positions, however It has come to my attention that the paper ballot form contains no confidence in only the correct uncontested positions. This not only confirms my original point that the electronic ballot papers are incorrect, but also means we are in the outrageous situation of having two different ballot papers for the one election.

Given the seriousness of these failings, I ask again that you invalidate the election, and I would appreciate a response indicating your receipt of these complaints.

Thank you,

Peter McCaffrey

You might think that one screw-up was enough for VUWSA this evening, but no...

It turns out that VUWSA don't know how to use the BCC field when sending emails and I had someone contact me just now who was a little annoyed that their email address had been spread around to dozens of other class reps without their permission.

I saw a bigger problem in the email, in that VUWSA are planning to start 'Stop Lecture Meetings' again.

For the uninitiated, a Stop Lecture Meeting is, in VUWSA's words, "based on the trade union concept of a 'Stop Work Meeting' - in other words, VUWSA representatives barge into your lecture, interrupt your lecturer and talk for a few minutes to the class about whatever it is that VUWSA is up to at the moment. They also like to hold a few votes on highly biased questions so that they can report 'what students think'.

Below is the email that I have individually sent to each of the class representatives whose email wasn't BCC'd, containing my suggestions as to how they deal with VUWSA when they turn up at their lecture.

Enjoy!

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Dear Class Rep,

I hear that VUWSA are about to start so called 'Stop Lecture Meetings'.

For those of you who are lucky enough to have not yet experienced a Stop Lecture Meeting, this is when VUWSA representatives come into your lecture, interrupt your lecturer and spend 5 minutes discussing ridiculous issues, and then call for votes on highly biased questions, just so that VUWSA can report 'what students think'.

Obviously, as elected class rep's, this is your own call, but may I make the following recommendation for how you could best represent the students in your class:

Stand up and say: "As class rep, I'm meant to represent the interests of this class. Therefore, in the interests of this class, please leave us alone so we can get some work done."

I honestly hope that you enjoy your next few months as a class rep, but should it instead alert you to just how useless VUWSA really are, feel free to contact me - I'd love to chat about what can be done about VUWSA.

-Peter McCaffrey
-Vic Student

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for VUWSA, it does.

Why do we force students to pay millions of dollars to student associations, when they can't even follow their own constitution and hold legitimate elections?

I've just written the following letter to the appointed returning officer for the still underway special election:

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Dear Returning Officer,

I wish to complain about the current Special Election being held at VUWSA.

I content the election is invalid as it breaches the VUWSA constitution.

Schedule 2, Point 24, B, (Page 23) states that:

...
In the event that there is only one candidate, for any one of these positions, or only
five candidate for the executive, you may vote ‘no confidence’ for that position.
...

While I personally like the option of voting No Confidence in every position, and would suggest this would be a good ammendment to the VUWSA constitution, the constitution as currently written clearly states that the "No Confidence" option is only available when only one candidate is standing for a given position.

Given that this has not been complied with in this election, I ask you to invalidate the election.

Thank you,

Peter McCaffrey

The media still don't seem to quite understand the relationship between the current government parties.

The media portray a centrist National party, being pulled to the right by ACT, United Future doing nothing in the middle, and the Maori Party as being out of the left in a strange temporary agreement where compromise will always be necessary.

Yes, ACT is on the right, and disagrees with National on quite a few issues. That part is probably quite well understood.

United Future may well be very small, but anyone that actually takes the time to read their policies will find they're a lot closer to ACT than to National. It is United Future's confidence and supply agreement that pushes for lowering and flattening of tax rates. ACT instead lays out the goal of catching Australia (although that will require tax cuts too, of course). United Future are also quite happy to call for more use of the private sector in the health system.

The problems with the media's analysis really become evident though when the Maori Party are thrown in to the mix. There are big differences between ACT and the Maori Party on certain issues - particularly with regard to constitutional issues, no one can deny that. But those same issues exist between the Maori Party and National as well - and to pretty much the same extent too.

What the media forget, is that underpinning the Maori Party philosophy is a deep distrust and skepticism about the Government (in general, not this particular one). The Maori Party consistently call for power, control and funding to be removed from the state and given to Iwi, Whanau and Maori themselves. The Maori Party want schools run by Maori, for Maori, prisons run by Maori, for Maori, etc etc.

You may have noticed a few minor changes to the website over the last few days.

What you won't have noticed are the numerous changed behind the scenes.

The ACT on Campus website runs on top of Drupal and we've been busy upgrading our site from Drupal 5, released almost three years ago now, to the latest Drupal 6.12 version.

It will take us a while to integrate into our website all the cool new features that Drupal 6 comes with, and in fact we're still busy sorting out some compatability issues to get the site working like it was before the upgrade, but it will be well worth it once it's done.

Watch this space.