Fortunately no one really cares about OUSU (apart from the the young labour club who run the show - i.e. supply the majority of the candidates and the voters - most years). It's principle functions seem to be wasting time and money & being something to half-heartedly complain about.

Reality: 1, Oxford 0.

Email is not a guaranteed delivery mechanism. Idiots.

When I was at university in America, the e-voting system was integrated with the university computing account. So you logged in using your university credentials and were then presented with a list of elections that you could vote in.

Why not implement an SSO system, rather than relying on insecure e-mail?

The people who stand for SU elections are generally even less useful than their parliamentary counterparts.

Can we discount Peter Nordberg's opinion? He's clearly not an insider, since anyone at Oxford would naturally be capable of distinguishing between principle and principal.

It would certainly be the case at one of the great universities, at any rate.

Did they check which candidate's supporters *didn't* get their emails 'accidentally delayed'?

Voting turnout was really low, and had historically always been that way.

One year the PTB decided that they needed to do something about voter apathy so tried all sorts of tricks, campaigns, harassment etc. to increase turnout.

The inherent thing about apathy and laziness is that those who don't care aren't suddenly going to care because someone they don't care about tells them to care, and those that can't be bothered just can't be bothered.

"Voting apathy isn't something you can fix that easily."

Oh yes, it is. Paying folks for voting would work wonders. And, no, it's not a bribe. There is an expenditure of time and effort in voting, and it's not unreasonable for that time to be recompensed - the money NuLabour have wasted on electronic voting could easily have been used to pay everyone a fiver each time they voted. The appropriate fee for students is, of course, a pint of beer (or, since it's Oxford we're talking about, a glass of Dom, perhaps?)...

I'm just surprised that OUSU were actually trying to encourage voter turnout. I thought their normal approach was to get most of their cronies into unelected positions and then throw their toys out of the pram when people noticed the lack of democracy. It's about time they realised that they'll never actually be a useful body for the whole uni and settled into the status of being a small club.