How Voting Works

How does voting work?

The voting system at Beds SU is bespoke to us and therefore looks a little different to what you might see in a local/national election in the UK.

How to vote

All registered students at the University of Bedfordshire, from all UK campuses, are eligible to vote.

Voting is done online and is open 24 hours a day between 12 noon on 26 February 2024 and 16:00 on 7 March 2024.

We use the Alternative Vote (AV) system. This means that voters can rank candidates in order of preference. Instead of putting a cross in a box next to your favourite candidate, voters can put a 1 next to their 1st choice, a 2 next to their 2nd choice, and so on. Voters can rank as many or as few candidates as they choose.

This should mean that your vote never goes to waste: if a voter does not get their first-choice preference, they may get their second or third.

Changing Votes: Voters have the right to change their vote at any point until the close of elections.

Re-Open Nominations: On the ballot, there is always the option to ‘Re-Open Nominations’, otherwise known as R.O.N. R.O.N is always counted as a valid candidate, therefore if R.O.N wins an election, the Students’ Union would have to re-open nominations for that position and run the elections for that position again.

Don't want to vote? Voters also have the option to spoil their ballot for any or all of the positions in the election. 

Problems with voting?

All registered students at UoB can log on to the Beds SU website using their UoB log-in details and submit their vote anytime between 12 noon on 26 February 2024 and 16:00 on 7 March 2024.

If you are facing technical issues, please email the elections team on elections@beds.ac.uk as soon as possible for support. Please remember to include screenshots of any errors you’re shown alongside your details (including your student ID Number).

Email the Elections Team

The Count

We are using our Campus Points Counting System similar to the American “electoral college” system, to better represent the views and voices of students at our smaller campuses. Our new system is based on two tried and tested systems of voting, so even though it may be bespoke to us, we can have confidence in the system returning us an accurate result.

We count the votes by campus groups. The campus groups are listed below. Each campus group has a set number of ‘Campus Points’ available to it. The more votes a candidate wins at each campus, the more ‘Campus Points’ they win from each campus.

The overall winner is the candidate with the most Campus Points. 

 This means that candidates will have to win over voters on more than one campus in order to win the overall election.