Good Voting Guide

It is almost voting time for the Leadership Elections, and we’ve pulled together a handy guide to cover all the information you need to know. Voting opens at 10am on the 11th March and closes at 2pm on the 13th March - you can check out the candidates and their manifestos here. 

How To Vote 

You can either vote in person at one of our voting stations in the library or at the SU – you'll just need 5 minutes and your student ID number.  

Or you can vote online – you'll just need to be logged into the SU website. If you can’t vote, check out our login guide or email voice@su.rhul.ac.uk  

What do my votes mean? 

We adopt the Single Transferable Vote system at RHSU. This means that you vote in order of preference. So, for example, you may select Candidate A as your top preference for the position of President, then Candidate B as your second and Candidate C as your third. Every position in the election also has an extra candidate which we add called Re-Open Nominations (RON). A vote for this candidate is your way of telling us that you feel that candidates ranked below RON are not suitable for the role or deserving of your vote. 

Once all votes for a position have been cast the candidate with the lowest number of first preference votes is eliminated. We then take the votes cast for that candidate and count their second preference. After another count of the votes, again the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated. This continues until one candidate gets enough votes so that they can't be beaten, and the winner is announced. 

RHSU Priority 8 

For the Priority 8, you will be able to rank all of the potential priorities in order of preference too. The top 8 will be chosen as the Union’s priorities for 2025/26. 

What to be aware of?  

During the voting period, candidates and their campaign teams will be out and about on campus, engaging with you about why you should vote for them. Whilst we are encouraging campaigning, we also want to ensure that all students are respected whilst on campus and are also not pressured to vote. There are a series of rules and regulations that candidates (and their campaign teams) must follow otherwise they risk consequences including being disqualified from the election. 

I think a rule has been broken... 

If you have been engaging with a candidate and feel that they have broken a rule, then you are within your rights to submit a complaint. You can do this by using the online complaints form, and the deputy returning officer will investigate. If you’re not sure but have concerns that you would like to discuss, then please reach out to the elections team at voice@su.rhul.ac.uk 

Check out the full guide here.