Who Stole the University Senate Election by Steve Hind
In October 2007 Angus McFarland was elected as the Undergraduate member of the University Senate amidst allegations of gross wrongdoing and fraud against the Young Liberal-aligned candidate Duncan McKay. The Registrar’s office claims still to be investigating, and yet Angus was installed as the winner just one week after voting closed. The whole experience has highlighted the rift between student politics and students, and the total lack of transparency in the electoral process. Steve Hind has spent the last two weeks speaking to those involved and has discovered some startling truths…
The Sydney University Senate is University’s peak body. Each year two students, one undergraduate and one postgraduate are elected to sit on the Senate. The Senate makes the big decisions about funding, class sizes and future directions for the University. As such the student positions, especially the undergraduate position, are hotly contested.
So that they can vote, all undergraduate students are sent a ballot paper in a sealed, addressed envelope. If they choose to vote (approximately 1000 to 1500 of over 30,000 students do each year) they open the letter, fill out the ballot paper and seal it in an envelope upon which they sign a declaration that the vote is theirs.
The 2007 election was marred by controversy. In the lead up to the campaign Angus, who was then SRC President, sent out an email from his SRC address, to the SRC mailing list advertising his run for the Senate. In it he announced that the SRC had endorsed him as its candidate.
Many people called this a gross abuse of his position. However, an endorsement by the SRC is not wrong in and of itself and when asked about this, Angus was at pains to point out that the motion was neither raised nor seconded by him, and that it was passed unanimously. He told me that it was common practice at other universities for the student bodies to endorse a candidate with experience running student organisations.
Be that as it may, no other candidates were told there would be an endorsement, or given the chance to make their case. In practice, only endorsing a candidate with ‘experience running student organisations’ means only endorsing the SRC President, who in recent years has almost always been from Labor Left, and has usually held the Senate position concurrently with being NUS President.
Put frankly, Angus’ potential abuse of power pales in comparison to the allegations of mail tampering, ballot-rigging and voter intimidation levelled against Duncan McKay. The allegations have been corroborated by a number of sources. None of them were willing to speak to me on the record, but all were intimately involved.
I made several attempts to contact the University’s Registrar, and Returning Officer for the election, Dr. William Adams. He did return one of my calls, but when I did not answer, did not return any others. He did confirm to the Sydney Morning Herald late last year that an investigation was underway.
It all started when a number of students from International House approached Angus McFarland in his capacity as SRC President. They alleged that Duncan had presented them with declaration envelopes in which ballot papers had already been sealed. They were then asked to sign the declaration. In order for Duncan to do this, he would have needed to open the students’ mail, remove their ballot papers, fill them out and then seal them in the declaration envelopes.
Sources have insinuated strongly that Duncan’s manner was aggressive or at least intimidating towards the students involved. Indeed I have learned that Duncan was deemed a security risk and escorted out of International House. Union Board Director and Labor Left heavyweight Ruchir Punjabi is said to have been involved in his capacity as a Residential Assistant at International House.
Angus confirmed to me that he, in his capacity as a candidate in the election, emailed Dr. Adams asking that the matter be looked into and attaching witness statements from the students involved. At that point, the allegations of wrongdoing exploded into allegations involving “several incidents at several colleges,” according to one source.
No one is sure how they knew to check, but soon after St. Andrew’s College, where Duncan had once lived as a student, reported that some of its residents had received the same sealed-ballot doorknock treatment. While it has not been confirmed, it seems that other colleges made similar reports.
I contacted Duncan for his comment on these allegations and he refused to comment, telling me to refer my questions to the University. Tim Andrews, NSW President of the Young Liberals and Duncan’s factional boss did told that Duncan was not running in the election as a Young Liberal-endorsed candidate.
In light of this, shortly before the election Dr. Adams emailed the candidates informing them that due to allegations of wrongdoing against one of them, the entire election may be cancelled and re-run.
However when the time came to count the ballots, something had changed. As is common practice, the declaration envelopes were opened and the number of ballot papers was counted in the presence of scrutineers. Although there was no formal count of the number of votes for each candidate being conducted at that time, a source who was present informed me that by their informal count, Duncan was winning easily.
Scrutineers (who observe the counting of votes on behalf of candidates) representing Angus, Duncan and Patrick Bateman were present and all had the chance to challenge the validity of any declaration. According to one of the scrutineers who was there, no challenges were made and the scrutineers left around lunch time.
The ballots were then sent off-site to be counted, in accordance with standard practice. However, after this count had been conducted 376 of the 1266 ballots were declared as invalid and Angus was declared the winner. No scrutineers were present at the count, and they did not have the chance to challenge the decision to invalidate any of the ballots. This flies in the face of procedure in all other student elections and means that the decision to invalidate ballots was made in a vacuum of unaccountability.
Normally the ballots would be checked to see if the paper had been tampered with in some way, if the unique numbers on the ballots match the numbers on file and if the vote itself expresses a clear preference for a candidate. The reason why the 376 votes in question were invalidated is unknown.
Since they drastically changed the outcome, and because of the allegations against Duncan, we can safely assume that they were votes for Duncan. However we do not know on what basis they were declared invalid. This complete lack of transparency is totally unacceptable.
One informed source told me that any ballots declared invalid would have been done so for one of the reasons described earlier. However other people who were involved have told me they suspected that all of the votes for Duncan were simply invalidated. Since many of Duncan’s second preferences were flowing to Pat Bateman, with whom he had done a preference deal, any valid votes for Duncan that were invalidated may have flowed to Pat, who lost to Angus by a narrow margin.
While the University did not comment, Angus confirmed to me that the investigation into Duncan’s actions was still on going as only in the past couple of weeks he had been presented with a draft witness statement which he made changes to and which he has not been given back to sign.
If the allegations against Duncan are made out he could be guilty of Academic Misconduct which, like severe plagiarism, could result in him being excluded from attending Sydney University in the future. That now seems a somewhat moot point as whether through fear of being found guilty, or a desire to attend a university where the Young Liberals enjoy more electoral success, Duncan is now pursuing his studies at UTS.
The whole saga has highlighted some serious deficiencies in the process of electing your Student Senator. For starters, it is rampantly unclear why this sort of election is not conducted online, with students voting through their MyUni accounts, as other universities around the country do. The expense is mailing out over 30,000 ballot papers to have only 1266 returned must be massive.
Further the wisdom of having the Registrar as the Returning Officer is questionable. Dr. Adams sits on the Senate as Secretary, as well as sitting on the Academic and Rhodes Scholarship boards. He is a powerful and well connected man. Since Returning Officers are supposed to be the recipients and arbiters of complaints and allegations during elections it is possible that students would be intimidated out of making complaints, especially about the electoral process, for fear of crossing Dr. Adams.
Of course the students elected to represent students’ needs in the SRC, the Union or the Senate overwhelmingly come from organised political factions who benefit from having physical paper voting as it plays to their strengths in organising support. They have very little incentive to advocate for a change to the status quo.
This election was marred by allegations of what amounts to a gross fraud and a serious abuse of students’ rights. It will be remembered for this. But it should also be remembered for highlighting the total lack of transparency in way in which a tiny proportion of students decide which person will represent the rest. It is that process that stole the election from all of us.