Activities Zone votes to strip voting rights from taster members

Photo Courtesy: UCL Website

On Monday, 26 February, during its meeting, the SU Activities Zone unanimously passed a policy proposal to take away voting rights from taster members of UCL clubs and societies.

“Tasters” are free, temporary memberships giving students a preview of the society experience before choosing to join, through certain events. Currently, getting a taster membership 28 days before elections grants students a voting right in committee elections. 

This is not the first time voting rights have been debated. Last year, a similar motion was proposed to limit the taster membership to 28 days. The zone decided to continue the discussion in the next meeting. According to one of the meeting’s attendees, it seemed the majority was in favour, but neither discussion nor vote happened during the next meeting. 

As argued  during the meeting and in the policy proposal, taster memberships could be used to manipulate society elections, for example through candidates getting their friends to join the society as taster members for the sole purpose of gaining their vote. Small clubs & societies are especially prone to this, as only a few votes can easily change the election outcome. It was also shown that even large societies might be prone to vote rigging, as allegedly happened in the Economics & Finance Society, where the president would pay students to vote for him, according to revelations by the Cheese Grater, as mentioned in the proposal.

It is important to note that there was no strong evidence showing the scale of alleged vote rigging in the policy proposal document nor during the zone meeting. The allegations put forward by Cheese Grater against EFS arguably lacked substantiated evidence and were presented as gossip in their “Society Bitch” column. 

The presenter of the motion recognised this, as they argued that the loophole should be closed simply because of the potential for vote rigging as even if it was happening in one society it should be enough. This worked, as no one voted against the motion. The proposal still needs to pass through the Union Executive to become an official policy.