Student Council Elections | Voting period not extended
The student council elections held this week will not be extended, the UvA Central Voting Committee has decided. A request for extension had been submitted by the Central Student Council (CSR). Both the CSR and party De Vrije Student will appeal to the State Council as a matter of urgency.
This week’s student council elections, which end tonight at 11:59 p.m. will not be extended. The CSR had requested this on behalf of all faculty student councils, except those of the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Law. The reason for this request was the turbulent protest week that the UvA has been through and the two closing days that resulted. According to the CSR, students therefore had insufficient opportunity to cast their digital vote. The CSR therefore wanted an extension of the voting period until Wednesday, May 22, 11:59 p.m. for all faculties, except the two mentioned above.
Main rule
The central voting committee did not agree to this and did not extend the voting period. The polling committee invoked “the main rule” that the preconditions of an election are not changed while that election is already in progress. “Only an objective impossibility of lawfully completing the election can, in our judgment, be grounds for departing from that main rule. That, in our judgment, is not the case here,” the voting committee said.
The voting committee also noted “that the voting was conducted online and that the called voters were able to cast their votes unimpeded throughout the voting period. As a result, the election week for all faculties and students ends at 11:59 p.m. tonight. Parties may file an emergency appeal against the decision with the Council of State.
Update May 18, 08.30 hrs:
Student party De Vrije Student (DVS) and the CSR decided Friday evening to file an urgent appeal with the Council of State because they disagree with this decision. Willem Volker of DVS: “We feel that due to the recent circumstances we have hardly been able to conduct a regular campaign. The potential electorate of DVS consists mainly of people who are not yet actively using their right to vote at the UvA. By this I am referring to the more ‘moderate’ voters, many of whom are not yet aware of the existence of the elections at all. The protests have resulted in our not being able to meet these people in a normal setting, or at all. We speculate that we will be underrepresented in student government as a result.”
