Hacks and Cross-campus ballots

Site: CotH, Section: CrossCampus, Page: The basics.

Cross-campus ballots are complex in a number of ways. The candidates will fail to understand the rule, complain that the rules are too restrictive and produce manifestos of dubious quality, the votes need to be collected and counted (something that electronic voting has helped with), and turnout needs to be high.

And then you get people asking for provisional results and being unaware just how close they came to leaving via the window.

Keeping some order over this is the task of the Senior Returning Officer, with (in theory) assistance from Steering and any hacks who are about and not involved in campaigning. In practice disassistance from candidates, campaigners, and people wandering through makes this more difficult.

Candidates in Cross-campus ballots are strongly advised that following SO 0.0.0.1 will greatly increase their chances of survival. Though most candidates seem to feel that because CotH has never traceably killed any candidates they're safe anyway.

Site: CotH, Section: CrossCampus, Page: The basics.

Some of this is probably very applicable to elections other than Cross-Campus ballots. Some hacks went to a City Council election count in 2003 more because it was a count than because the result really mattered. (After all, apparently the County Council actually does everything)