Electoral Failings: Disenfranchised and confused
Many Oxford students will have barely registered the existence of last week’s local council elections. Indeed, it could be said that for a significant fraction of the brightest undergraduates in the country the recent plebiscite was marginally less interesting than the latest prophylactic related JCR motion, or even the spasmodic twitching of the mouldering corpse of OUCA.
Despite the best efforts of the political parties involved, and the deposition of several acres of Amazonian rainforest in the collective pigeonholes of the university in the form of an embarrassment of badly designed flyers, it seems that we generally couldn’t give a fuck. This is clearly not a good thing. The Oxford Student does not support apathy in any context, particularly in an election.
This is not to say that we do acknowledge that Neighbours may seem to be a more pressing concern than exercising one’s democratic right, but are adamant that it is possible to attend to both. However, just because many students were too lazy, poorly organised, or simply drunk to vote, does not make it any less acceptable that some were denied the opportunity to do so in the first place.
It is possible to bemoan the lack of political engagement of the younger generation at great length, but this does not remotely detract or render excusable the conduct of those whose actions mean that a sizeable number of fresh faced youngsters are disenfranchised. The results of the elections themselves are a further indication of the crucial importance of establishing a full and complete electoral register. With the winning margin in some cases as small as 2.
% of the total vote, the failure to register students is suddenly much more important. Not only were those Lincolnites denied their democratic right, but potentially if they had had one they could have changed the outcome of the election. What is perhaps most tragic is that those students who were left unable to vote last Thursday were not the victims of a conspiracy or any kind of exciting and deliberate misdemeanour.
No, instead they were deprived of places on the electoral register by the bumbling inefficiencies of that tired behemoth, university and college bureaucracy. We all encounter this largely faceless administration on a daily basis, from receiving our battels bills at the beginning of term to negotiating the intricacies of the accommodation ballot, and many of us will have stories of essential paperwork going missing, or documents arriving late or incomplete.
However, while it is one thing not to receive your lecture list on time, it is quite another to be disqualified from voting because of an administrative error. This is not to say that colleges and the university are in general badly or amateurishly run. On the contrary, given the labyrinthine complexities and interlinked tribal loyalties of Oxford, it is extraordinary that things are usually handled with an impressive degree of efficiency.
And certainly college bureaucracies are vastly, incomparably better run than the majority of undergraduate ventures. However, we stand by our decision to publish details of the failings that occurred last week. Although many of those who were unable to vote probably had no intention of doing so anyway, and it is impossible to know whether the outcome might have been affected, the situation should have been handled better.
We as students are undeniably badly organised and forgetful, but we can still justifiably complain if the same failings on the behalf of our elders deny us the right to vote in such a close election.
11th May 2006