ELECTIONS 255
The Hist holds elections in the second half of Hilary term each year, with the new Committee formally taking office in the final week of term and the functional handover occurring after exams.
Nominations are now closed for the General Committee of the 255th Session. You can find any info you need to vote in these elections below. If you have any more questions after reading this page, reach out to the ESC at elections.thehist@gmail.com.
You can see any updates from our ESC on the election noticeboard linked below, including a full list of candidates:
Information below:
Important Dates
Electoral Subcommittee
Rules and Logistics: canvassing, hustings, manifestos, and how to nominate yourself
Voting: franchise and how to vote
Other Positions
Important Dates
2pm, Sat 30 March: Deadline to appeal franchise
9am-5:30pm, Tue 2 April: Polling open
More details on both below.
Electoral Subcommittee
The Electoral Subcommittee (ESC) is responsible for governing the election and making sure all the rules are followed.
This year, the Chair of the ESC is Kate Henshaw (CorrSec 253) and the Secretary is Aoileann Ní Mhurchú (Pro-DC 252). Áine Kennedy, Mary Woods, Anna Sawicka, and Zara Kearney are also members of the ESC as outgoing officers of the 254th session who are not running in the election. David Wolfe, Tom Comer, and Audrey Maglich are also members of the ESC, having been nominated by candidates in the two most senior contested races.
If you have questions or concerns during the election period, you can always reach out to the ESC. You can contact them at elections.thehist@gmail.com.
Election Rules and Logistics
Canvassing:
No canvassing of any nature is allowed.
The only time you can actively promote yourself as a candidate is through your manifesto and at hustings. Outside of this, you cannot make comments about the suitability of yourself or another candidate. For example, if somebody asks you if you are running for a position, you can say yes but you cannot explain why you are running, what your policies would be, why you think you would be good at it, etc.
If you are caught canvassing, your name may be struck from the ballot and/or have your franchise revoked.
If you believe you have witnessed canvassing and would like to make a complaint, you can do so by emailing the ESC at elections.thehist@gmail.com.
Manifestos:
All officer candidates are encouraged to submit a manifesto. MC candidates cannot.
Candidates’ manifestos can be up to two A4 pages in length, with the exception of candidates in the Auditor and Censor race who can have manifestos of up to three A4 pages in length. Please submit a plaintext version of your manifesto too. PDF format preferred.
If you’re going on Erasmus at any stage during the session, that must be explicitly declared on your manifesto.
Normal equity rules apply.
Manifestos will be published on this page, on our social media, and via email.
All manifestos must be emailed to elections.thehist@gmail.com by 11pm on Wed 27 March. Any manifestos received after this deadline or manifestos which do not meet the above criteria will not be published.
Hustings:
Hustings took place on Thursday 28 March in person in the GMB. This is the only time officer candidates are allowed to openly campaign. We would strongly encourage all voters to watch hustings before casting your votes if you were not able to attend in person.
You can watch Hustings back on our YouTube here.
Voting
Franchise
To be eligible to vote in Hist elections, there are two requirements.
You must be a member of the Society. You can become a member here.
You must have attended at least three debates this year. This can include any of our Wednesday night chamber debates, our Stormont debate, our marathon debate, the final of any of our internal competitions, and our TCDSU debate collab with the Phil.
Unlike speaks, franchise or attendance at debates for franchise is not transferrable between sessions. If you had franchise last year, you may not necessarily have franchise this year.
You can see a list here of everyone the ESC has deemed eligible to vote in the election on April 2nd. There are significant gaps in our list so if you think you are eligible but are not on the list, you must appeal your franchise by emailing elections.thehist@gmail.com by Saturday (March 30th) at 2pm. In your appeal, list all the debates you have attended.
It is helpful if you are able to provide any proof of your attendance, please do. Examples of proof could include a photo of you in the audience of the debate, the names of committee members or others who might remember you being at the debate, details about the debate itself, etc. You can also explain any other context you feel might be helpful like if there was a reason you didn’t sign in for the debate or something else. You can still appeal your franchise without the above, but all supporting evidence increases the chances of franchise being granted.
How to vote
At 9am on April 2nd, a link to the ballot will be emailed to everyone with franchise. If you do not receive an email but have franchise, check your spam and if it is still not there, email elections.thehist@gmail.com as soon as possible to fix the problem.
Each voter will be able to fill out the ballots at that link until polling closes that afternoon (exact time TBC). Voters can number the candidates in each contested race in order of preference.
The ESC will open the results as calculated by the voting software. Following this, the ESC will publish them here, as well as announcing them in person.
Other Positions
The tenth Officer of the Hist is the Equity Officer. The Equity Officer is not elected during the election period. After the rest of the General Committee has been elected, applications will open for this position. Anyone can apply and there are no requirements for speaks or anything else. Based on the applications, the General Committee will appoint an Equity Officer.
Similarly to Equity, applications will open for our subcommittees and convenorships at a later stage. The RecSec is in charge of opening applications for our Robinson Subcommittee during the summer and the Equity Officer will do the same for the Inclusion Subcommittee. The DC will open applications for Harney’s and Grattan’s convenors in the first semester at some stage.
There may be other subcommittee, convenorships, or positions open too! For example, this year we opened applications for pro-convenors for our Girls Mace too. All such opportunities will be advertised via an email to all our members and on our social media.
You also don’t have to be on the General Committee or a subcommittee to be involved in the Hist! You can be as involved as you would like as an ordinary member and we often even have ordinary members helping to organise events or coming to us with event ideas they have so don’t feel like you have to run for Committee to be involved next year!