You know how it is. It’s election time at CUSU, and although you don’t especially care, you feel obliged to vote anyway. So you log in, put any names you recognise at 1 and then vote to re-open nominations (RON) for positions that mean less to you; or, perhaps, you take issue with the fact that so many positions are canvassed unopposed, and you vote RON out of protest.

Quite unexpectedly, RON manages to win. So what happens?

In normal circumstances, for the high-profile positions like President, Welfare Officer and Women’s Officer, the procedure is clear. This is because these are sabbatical positions, filled by a student who takes a year out to perform these duties for a salary: the CUSU Constitution, at Article J.11, requires that these positions be filled by a candidate elected in a cross-campus election. The elections will be run again in Easter Term, just as the election for CUSU Coordinator was last year when no-one stepped up to take it on.

So far, so democratic. But what about the other positions, the ones not paid as sabbatical officers but containing a representative element? There are a few elections to the part-time executive. This year, the positions of National Union of Students (NUS) Delegate and Ethical Affairs Chair are being elected – but thanks to provisions in the CUSU Standing Orders, the student body will not get a say in these elections if RON should happen to be victorious.

Why? Well, as you may have noticed in the Little Book of Nominations that CUSU has kindly delivered to your pigeonhole, these positions will be ‘co-opted’: elected by Single Transferable Vote within the current CUSU Council. When you vote RON for one of these positions, then, you won’t get another say with new candidates: the CUSU Council can make the decision for the student body (see Article C.6(i) in the Standing Orders).

What really happens is that the option to re-open nominations doesn't actually do this. In reality, it creates a vacancy, and that vacancy is filled according to whatever rules are already in place. For sabbatical positions, we have to have another election; for the part-time executive positions, however, this means that the CUSU Council can choose to fill them on its own, without asking the students. This is exactly what happened last year, when two NUS Delegate positions were left vacant by RON and were simply chosen by Council the following week. In fact, there’s no reason at all why the CUSU Council can’t simply install the unsuccessful candidate without asking the student population.

At the time, Charlie Bell, now editor of the Tab, said: “It hardly comes as a surprise that rather than listening to students CUSU has wrapped itself in dishonour once again. Anointing and ordaining their own nuncios to NUS rather than re-opening nominations – what they were obliged to do, in fact – choosing those who will ‘vote in line with CUSU Policy’ – it’s a farce.” In fact, they had no such obligation: CUSU is perfectly entitled to do this. The question, of course, is whether they should.

Be careful not to take a RON turn

Meanwhile, another major twist has affected the RON institution that could derail the election for a major CUSU sabbatical. This year, Poppy Ellis Logan is the only official candidate for the sabbatical Welfare and Rights Officer; however, a “mystery candidate” has announced that they will be campaigning for a RON vote to allow them to run, after they missed the deadline for nominations: they were "contracted to a graduate job, and therefore could not run in the full election" on time.

When we contacted them for comment on this story, CUSU asked us to avoid sharing the candidate's name, as it could further damage the electoral process. The trouble is that the candidate's identity is as open a secret as it is possible to be, having initially campaigned openly under their own name for a RON vote.

This means that if RON wins in this election, the mystery candidate’s manifesto will have been made public before those nominations are re-opened, breaching Article C.4(iii) of the CUSU Standing Orders. Any further breaches could result in disqualification by the Elections Committee, a subset of the CUSU Council. Likewise, another candidate or concerned party could formally challenge the conduct of the election before the Committee, which could disqualify the candidate or invalidate the entire election.

A spokesperson for the mystery candidate's campaign said that the Elections Committee had raised the possibility of disqualification from a future bye-election. "Helen Hoogewerf-McComb [the CUSU President] explained that there is a three-strike rule, and that the CUSU Election Committee review the conduct of candidates. Our initial campaign counted as one strike," the spokesperson told Varsity.

"This morning, CUSU got in touch with us to suggest that the committee felt the campaign was very close to or perhaps over the line, and that they strongly advise we work harder with the candidate's anonymity," they added.

"CUSU have come down on us like a tonne of bricks; we have tried to respond accordingly to CUSU's advice, but seemingly can't get it right. This campaign was borne solely out of one candidate's passion for welfare, and their view that the position was worth fighting for, not to be tied up in the dramatics of student politics."

The spokesperson further informed Varsity that despite the long-standing rules, Hoogewerf-McComb had told them at the outset to "Have some fun with the RON thing!", suggesting if the candidate "was to do the pre-planned humans of Cambridge publicity, then... they should hold a whiteboard in front of their face".

A statement from the CUSU-GU Elections Committee reads: "The CUSU-GU Elections Committee has no jurisdiction over the actions of students who are not candidates in the elections or registered as a campaigner for a candidate.

"We do, however, publicise the fact that some elections rules, such as the prohibition on announcing your candidacy prior to any election apply at all times, not just in the immediate run-up to an election or bye-election. Candidates could be disqualified from running in future elections if they were found to have breached these rules. CUSU does this to ensure a level playing field for all candidates and to prevent people from becoming discouraged if, for example, they see that a role is likely to be heavily contested."

Now, all of this is subject to the fact that the Elections Committee could simply shrug its collective shoulders and allow the breach. Articles J.14 and J.15 of the CUSU Constitution give it a discretion, not a duty, to disqualify candidates found in breach of electoral rules, though under Article J.16 decisions of the Elections Committee can be appealed to the Junior Proctor.

That being said, the Welfare Officer RON campaign is the culmination of a year of intense debate over welfare provision and mental health work in Cambridge; the election rules are something of a speed bump, and the disqualification of a strong candidate is a real possibility. Meanwhile, provisions in the CUSU Constitution allow candidates for elected positions to be installed, quite legally, over our heads.

CUSU elections are never the most thrilling political rollercoaster, but it’s always worth knowing what one is voting for – and a vote for RON might not have the straightforward effect one might expect.