I often joke about thinking of student unions as politician potty training. A place where members of various political parties learn to deposit their political shit into the hoops and holes set by their political masters. The aim of the game is to get away with as much shit, as cleanly as possible.
No time is this more true than during student union elections, when every year at most campuses, there are far more groups that appear on the ballot paper than are actually campaigning during election week. These extra groups are colloquially known as ‘feeder tickets’. They are commonly characterised by funny names and a level of unreality with names such as ‘Free parking’ or ‘Free beer’.
The rotten smell of feeder tickets comes from their ability to get votes without most voters having any idea where their votes are actually going. Feeder tickets are usually employed for positions where multiple candidates are elected, also known as multi-member ballots. Tickets appear ‘above the line’ meaning top of the ballot paper, and are designed to allow voters the simplicity of not having to fill out preferences for a large number of individual candidates, instead, giving that power to the ticket they select ‘above the line’. The problem is that many voters who choose feeder tickets have no idea they eventually all flow back into a political group, instead naively thinking it was perhaps someone being creative, or just for a laugh.
One of these multi-member ballots which is of special importance to political hacks of all persuasions across the country is that for the National Union of Students (NUS). NUS is the peak representative body for student unions across Australia and every year a national conference in December elected delegates from individual campuses decide the make-up and direction of the national union for the next year. The machinations of NUS deserve an entire piece, but in essence, feeder tickets can be the difference between a good outcome for your political faction at NUS, or a poor one.
Although feeder tickets might seem unsightly, they are polished by being completely in accord with election regulations. Prior to 2011, the Monash Student Association received 90+ applications for effectively joke tickets. Thankfully, there were steps taken to reform in 2011, principally requiring 15 signatures to register a ticket to run in elections. However, these steps are incomplete as evidenced by multiple feeder tickets running last year.
At a Monash Student Council meeting this year in-between semesters there was some minor reform that eliminated the ability of candidates to withdraw after the close of polling, but the incentive to run feeder tickets remains.
I must admit I’ve had a bit to do with student politics in my time at Monash. Last year, I was watching the count of votes, known as scrutineering, for a ticket (‘Switch’) that ran no feeder tickets. After initial numbers were established when counting for multi-member positions, an amazing thing happened. Indeed, it was even magical. A leading member of our chief opposing ticket (‘Go!’) conjured up withdrawal forms for all the ‘feeder ticket’ candidates, which then withdrew at the same time. This meant that all of the ‘feeder ticket’ candidates were no longer in the running and their votes were counted as votes for the tickets they had preferenced.
It was as though the ‘feeder tickets’ never existed. In effect, it meant that Ban Menzies Revolving Doors, Free Parking, Record My Lectures, International Student Concession Card, Free Beer, and Ralph Wiggum for President gave their preferences in exactly the same way as our chief opposition ticket—a special coincidence of course. Thus, a vote for any of the ‘feeder tickets’ above the line became a vote for the chief opposing ticket.
With one minor change, this is all within the new election regulations, well moulded by the student union bureaucracy, and it’s highly likely feeder tickets will run in this years’ election. However, instead of withdrawing all the ‘feeder tickets’ after the close of polling, now factional heavyweights will have to do so before.
The point advocates against this ‘feeder ticket’ bureaucracy make is that ‘feeder tickets’ aren’t adding to political diversity whatsoever and advantage those who misuse their inherent deceitfulness at the expense of other groups.
There are various ways to change the regulations to nullify the potential benefit and manipulative capability of ‘feeder tickets’. One obvious regulation would be to ban campaigning for more than one ticket. Another measure could be to allow voters to preference above the line, as opposed to what I observed last year: wherever voters put a ‘1’ above the line, their preferences would then flow as per that ticket’s preferences, irrespective of whether they numbered consecutively above the line or not. The alternative system that allows above the line voting is already in place in the NSW upper house, and at Melbourne University, where ‘feeder tickets’ are less influential.
The stench of illegitimacy feeder tickets evoke means they ultimately only build distrust in the supposedly democratic institutions that are meant to represent students. There’s probably only one way to flush feeder tickets away into the tide of history, to organise and raise awareness about their toxicity, until this newly learnt life skill is passed down permanently.
