Corruption in student union

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday May 01, 2002 13:04 by Ed Manning - Sligo IT fight_back23 at hotmail dot com

student union corruption!!

It has been brought to the attention of the college that major flaws have occurred and that a fair, just and democratic process has not been fulfilled in relation to the recent student union elections, held on the 17th of April this year at Sligo Institute of Technology.

We request a formal official investigation into the entire democratic election process at Sligo institute of technology.
We request that the following points be addressed in the official investigation;

1. An independent observer from Letterkenny IT observed possible discrepancies during the counting of votes.

2. A number of other observers noted that a particular ballot box may have been tampered with, part of a signature was rubbed off the sellotape sealing the ballot box. I.e. signatures of nominees were signed on paper then sellotaped over this seemed not to be the case with this particular box.

3. The election process under schedule 2- section 5(b) was not adhered to,
Official ballot boxes were not used, the replacement ballot boxes were not adequately sealed. This was witnessed on the day of first count and was pointed out to Chris Newell on the day of recount by union member Liam Carroll.

4. Schedule 2 part 5(a) not adhered to i.e. voting stopped at 4pm and should have
continued until 5pm

5. Schedule 2 of ITSSU part 4(c), five assistants appointed.

6. Schedule 2 of ITSSU part 2 (d), secret ballot not put in place.

7. Returning officer, manager of ITSSU requested that the ballot boxes be stored in the boot of his car, until candidate objected.

8. Ballot boxes stored in unsecured location (i.e. post room of reception) with secretary about to go off duty. Access to this room is available to everyone.

9. Inaugural meeting of the student representative council did not take place.

10. Schedule 2 the elections supervisory committee was not set up. Therefore no official returning officer was appointed to facilitate the running of the elections.