Sunburn — day 3, UMSU elections 2016
Although campaigners are enjoying the rich pickings associated with the generally good weather, we here are amused to observe campaigners turning puce from a little too much sun (Parkville Station journos are unfortunately not immune).
On the ground, Wednesday was a quiet day — everything took a while to pick up after the marathon Tuesday — although tempers seem to be fraying inexorably, so who knows what Thursday and Friday will bring.
Turnout
| Polling place | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Running total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Union House | 252 | 249 | 226 | 727 |
| Baillieu Library | 330 | 400 | 284 | 1014 |
| FBE Building | 82 | 95 | 67 | 244 |
| Burnley | — | 15 | 8 | 23 |
| VCA | — | 37 | 34 | 71 |
| Total | 664 | 796 | 619 | 2,074 |
The wrap
As alluded to above, simmering tensions haven’t yet seemed to have boiled over, although informally it seems more campaigners received periodic bans today than in previous days.
Campaigners spotted: More!, Stand Up!, Left Focus, Create, Independent Media, Activate. We found Hard Memes wandering around, putting up posters, but other than us criticising the hardness of their memes (‘3 on the Mohs hardness scale’) we don’t believe they were otherwise actively campaigning.
More! tells us that they printed 10,000 how-to-votes (HTVs) and at the end of Tuesday had almost run out of that particular print run. We don’t know if they actually printed and got through that many (we’re a bit sceptical), but we do notice they’ve got a new print run of HTV cards that they were handing out today. We’ll let you know when they sheepishly admit they lost a box or two.
Today also saw the appearance, in materials authorised by the Returning Officer, a poster questioning whether one can trust More! to “keep their promises”. Apologies for the appalling quality, but here it is:
The leaflet is published by Stand Up! campaigner (and 2015 UMSU General Secretary) Hana Dalton, although Stand Up! have not yet been able to respond to our question about whether they endorse the leaflet. A spokesperson for More! described the leaflet as “ugly, negative campaigning” and said the leaflet was “blatantly misleading and false”. Pressed on exactly how it was false, they told us “[t]here are not fewer (or ‘less’ [sic]) events this year. The ones they list as cancelled were replaced with several (and, indeed, more) new ones”, although didn’t address any particular item of the list.edited – see note [1]
[1] This paragraph originally read: “The leaflet is published by Stand Up! campaigner (and 2015 UMSU General Secretary) Hana Dalton, although Stand Up! have not yet responded to our question about whether they endorsed the message or the mode of delivery (probably because we’ve only given them 30mins so far to respond – we’ll update when they get back to us 🙂 ).” We updated it to reflect More!’s response to our questions.