No-one past the post
Anyone who has ever bemoaned students’ lack of interest in political participation could be forgiven for softly banging their heads against a wall last Thursday night. Hordes of eager students arrived bright-eyed at Vanbrugh polling station to exercise their democratic right, only to be told that - at least as far as the electoral register was concerned - they did not exist. This was not a symptom of lack of forethought, since all students resident on campus ought to have been automatically registered to vote. Worse, many students were reassured that they would be eligible, only to find out that this was not the case.
No bureaucratic procedure is free from the risk of administrative slip-ups, and the electoral process is more Byzantine than most. This, though, is no mere slip-up: it amounts to the systematic disenfranchisement of untold numbers of eligible voters, for many of whom last Thursday’s election would have been their first. It is, in short, nothing short of an outrage. Every possible precaution must be taken to ensure that this problem never occurs again, and students denied the right to vote ought to expect nothing less than a full investigation, and a sincere apology from those responsible - as well as an assurance that no student at York in the future will be denied their fundamental democratic right to cast a vote in a free, fair and open election.
No matter whether it affected the result, the result for the Heslington ward cannot be said to satisfy these conditions, and that is a sorry state of affairs indeed.
