I’m beginning to suffer election fatigue what with GCSU, America, shortly London and ULU as well. Well damm representative governance, that’s what I say.

ULU do get several points awarded for a sensible and secure electronic voting mechanism. You can vote from this page, online and confidentialy, assuming that you have got a username and password that have been emailed to your ULU College Email account.

How did they do such a thing you may ask… “Some colleges in the UoL will provide ULU with a database of the students who are eligible to vote in the elections from that college. This database includes the first name, last name, student ID number and college email address of these students.” So now you know… Here is all the info on the ULU voting procedures for the elections and here are the candidates for your consideration.

How I would have rigged the Goldsmiths College Student Elections and some recommendations for the future.

There are many ways of rigging an election and, with increased abstraction and dispersal of the act of voting, influencing the outcome of ballots gets easier and easier.

Let’s just think for a moment what takes place when a student votes. First of all, the student needs to be co-present with the ballot! This is a given and the only part of the process that can not be virtualised. The student presents some ID before being given a ballot paper. The ballot is privately completed and cast into the ballot box.

The Goldsmiths College Students Election e-Voting was extremely vulnerable to exploitation by someone with malicious intent. The e-voting mechanism virtualised the ballot paper instead of virtualising the whole process. Anyone visiting the goldsmithsstudents.com website was able to download a Microsoft Word file. This file used a macro to capture the input of the user; in this case the ranking of the preference of candidates. A student was expected to complete the form, save it, then send the file as an attachment from their college email account to su@gold.ac.uk

The most vulnerable part of the whole process is that single file made available for public download.

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News that Ralph Nader has announced plans to run again for the US presidency got me googling like crazy this afternoon…

Just to share with you the “Beastie Boy Ad Rock’s remix of Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader’s blistering critique of the news media and the current state of American politics.” Posted to the Guerrilla News Network (GNN).

Turn it up.

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With the candidates nominated for the Stonebridge by-election, here’s a little summary of them for you:

• ALADESHE, Funmi The Conservative Party
• COX, Sarah Respect
• ORR, Brian Green Party
• VAN KALWALA, Zaffar The Labour Party
• WILTSHIRE, Sandra Elina Liberal Democrats

Is “Happy voting!” really the proper way to close an email announcing a Council By-election? Anyway…
A seat has become vacant in the Stonebridge Ward following the death of Councillor Dorman Long. A by-election will be held on Thursday, 13 September 2007 to elect a new representative.

The by-election gives the Lib Dems another opportunity to win a seat - but will they win it? I doubt it. Stonebridge ward is a Labour heartland - you only have to look at the votes cast in the 2006 Local Election to see that… Winning this single seat will not change the overall political balance of Brent Council: The Lib Dems would need to win a few more by-elections or benefit from defections (not for the first time in Brent’s recent political history) in order to be in a position to leave the alliance with the Conservatives and lead a majority administration. This by-election is a litmus paper - are Stonebridge residents pleased with Cllr Paul Lorber’s coalition administration, enough to give the Lib Dem’s another Councillor? Or will we see a new face in the Council from the Labour Party?