The Undeb Bangor Sabbatical Officer Elections are governed by Bye-Law 7 – Elections, of the Undeb Bangor Constitution (which can be viewed here- www.UndebBangor.com/governancedocuments) and by the rules and regulations set out below, as approved by the Undeb Bangor Trustee Board and Elections Committee.  

Breaking any of these rules may result in sanctions being placed on a candidate, campaigner, or campaign. 

Nominations

A candidate is only entered into the election when they have successfully attained the following criteria: 

• Nominated themselves using the online nominations process by the nominations deadline. 
• Is eligible to stand in the elections as defined in the Articles of Association and Bye-Laws. 
• Attended the Candidates’ Briefing, or received a verbal briefing from the Deputy Returning Officer if they were not able to attend because of special circumstances. 
• Agree to be bound by these rules and Undeb Bangor Bye-Law 7 – Elections. 

Candidate Briefing 

All candidates must attend the candidate briefing.  

Candidates who do not attend the candidate briefing will not be permitted to stand in the elections. 

If any candidate is unable to attend the candidate briefing, the process will be: 

• The candidate must submit special circumstances to the Deputy Returning Officer within 2 working days of the date of candidate briefing. 
• The candidate must provide details of their special circumstances and why they are/were unable to attend.  
• The Deputy Returning Officer will decide whether to uphold the special circumstances. 
• Where candidates cannot attend the briefing due to special circumstances, in line with the above, the Deputy Returning Officer will arrange another opportunity for the candidate to receive a verbal briefing. 

To be entered into the election, candidates must have received a verbal candidate briefing within 4 working days of the initial timetabled candidate briefing. This includes those who may have submitted special circumstances in line with the above. Only in exceptional circumstances, and at the discretion of the Deputy Returning Officer, will candidates be allowed to stand in the election if the above have not been met.

Manifesto Text 

To run with a manifesto, candidates must submit their manifesto in Welsh or English by the deadline in the elections timetable. 

Manifesto text limits are; 

• Undeb Bangor Councillor Elections: no more than 300 words in whichever language it has been submitted in. 
• Sabbatical officer Elections: no more than 350 words in whichever language it has been submitted in.

Conduct 

Candidates and campaigners who through their involvement with, or who hold (or have held) positions of responsibility within Undeb Bangor may not use resources available to them and not to other students. This includes Undeb Bangor purchased equipment and clothing, any central Undeb Bangor mailing lists and official Undeb Bangor social media groups. This list is not exhaustive but does not include any individual club or society held social media accounts. 

Campaigners may only use mailing lists where it is lawful to do so. In most cases this will require explicit consent of the members on the list to use their details. 

Candidates are responsible for all campaign activity carried out in their name; this includes the actions of third parties on their behalf. 

Candidates and/ or their campaigners must not actively campaign until the official start of the campaigning period.

Prior to the start of campaigning, campaign teams are permitted to use Facebook, WhatsApp or other social media groups to plan and organise internally, but these groups should be closed, private and limited to the core campaign team. 

Candidates and campaigners may not: 

• Force, coerce or in any way intimidate students, particularly when they are near or in the act of voting. 
• Vote on behalf of another student 
• Intimidate any participant in the election 
• Deliberately sabotage any campaign other than their own 
• Deface another candidate’s materials, publicity, online media, social networking site etc 
• Make an attempt to defraud the election 
• Make any attempt to influence the impartiality of the Returning Officer, Deputy Returning Officer, Elections Committee or Undeb Bangor staff 
• Discuss the personal traits of another candidate 
• Misrepresent another candidate’s views or make claims about themselves or any other candidate that are untrue. 
• Set up their own 'voting station', hand voters an electronic device for the purpose of voting, supervise or watch a voter in the act of voting, or demand that voters take out their own electronic device in order to vote immediately 
• Be sponsored by an external company or body 
• Be endorsed by a University department, School, Service or Staff member. 
• Benefit from University staff sending emails to students on their behalf. 
• Use official central University social media groups, pages or accounts to aid in campaigning, if they are not also available to all other candidates. This includes, but is not limited to the following types of accounts; College, School, Halls, University Services etc. 
• bring the election process into disrepute 

Candidates and campaigners must: 

• Uphold the letter and spirit of the election rules and the Undeb Bangor Equal Opportunities, Zero Tolerance to Harassment and Bilingual policies at all times. 
• Follow the laws and regulations of both the land and the University at all times   

Elections Spending 

Candidates have a spending limit, which may not be exceeded or increased. 

Spending limits are the following 

• Sabbatical Officer Elections - £30 

Everything used in the election is given a cash value by the Returning Officer, or their nominated Deputy (excluding items listed in Section5.1 below). For clarity, this rule applies to ‘campaign gifts’ which may have cost you nothing but hold a ‘real world’ cash value. 

All resources and methods that you use in your election campaign that could be given a monetary value should be available to all of the other candidates. It is the responsibility of the candidate to check this before using them with the Deputy Returning Officer. 

No candidate may be sponsored by an external company or body. 

The following items for example are readily available to all candidates and their supporters and so their fair use does not carry a cash value: 

• Old T-shirts; Paint; Old bedsheets; Marker Pens; Blu-tack; Pre-used cardboard; Old wood; Pencils; String; Sticky tape; Pins, Pre-owned Fancy Dress items. This list is not exhaustive and any questions should be directed to the Deputy Returning Officer. 
• This rule has been included to assist candidates in making election time exciting, vibrant and high profile. The returning officer and their deputy are aware that this rule may be open to abuse and will be closely monitoring campaign resources as a result. Please remember that they are the people who determine ‘fair use’.

 Printed Publicity Material 

Sabbatical officer Elections 

• Printed publicity is limited to 30 A3 sheets (double sided), which will be printed by Undeb Bangor. Candidates are not permitted to print their own publicity material. 
• Candidates are responsible for the design of their own publicity 
• Candidates may produce as many designs as they wish. 
• Candidates may increase their printing to a maximum of 50 A3 sheets, by transferring money from their budget at a cost of 25p per sheet. For example, a maximum of 20 A3 sheets can be added at a cost from candidates’ budgets of £5 (20 sheets x 25p). 

Non-Printed Publicity Material 

Social Networking 

Facebook: 

• Your page name must be bilingual 
• You should have your introduction, manifesto and the election timetable and voting instructions displayed Bi-lingually. 
• Status updates, notes, wall posts and discussion topics may be displayed in the language of your choice. 

Twitter:

• You may campaign in the language of your preference 

Other social media 

• Where applicable you should have your introduction, manifesto and the election timetable and voting instructions displayed bi-lingually 

Elections Videos 

• You are encouraged to make elections videos and publicise these on social media. 
• Videos may be in the language of your choice. 
• Any text in videos can also be in the language of the candidate’s choice

Other Publicity Material 

Candidates are permitted to produce and/or purchase other publicity and campaign material in line with the rules set out under elections spending. 

Translation and Bi-lingual Policy 

Your manifesto text and ALL of the text for your publicity and campaign material (posters / leaflets / flyers / banners / t-shirts etc,…) must be handed in with your nomination by the publicity deadline 

Your text will be translated, checked and returned to you. It is your responsibility to ensure that you give Welsh and English equal prominence on your publicity and campaign material. For consistency we recommend that Welsh is to the left or above the English. Examples of previous election publicity exist on the Undeb Bangor website to help guide you. 

The translation limit for publicity prepared before the start of campaigning is: 

Sabbatical Officer Elections 

• Your Manifesto – 350 words 
• Your Slogan – 10 words 
• Other publicity text – 300 words 

Following the translation of all of the publicity received by the deadline candidates may submit further designs or text for translation if they so wish but should allow the translation unit a reasonable amount of time to carry out the work. Delivery of this translation cannot be guaranteed, although all efforts will be made.

Incumbent Candidates 

Incumbent candidates must not campaign when on work time and must take annual leave for any form of active campaigning.  This includes any campaigning on online platforms and social media. 

A timetable must be submitted to the Deputy Returning Officer detailing work time and campaign time. This must also include evenings. This must be submitted prior to campaign activity and not in retrospect. A template will be provided to candidates to fill in. 

Undeb branded clothing cannot be worn when campaigning. 

Undeb social media accounts, for example, Sabbatical Officer Facebook accounts or pages, cannot be used for campaigning or promotion of elections. 

Undeb mailing lists cannot be used for campaign purposes. 

When visiting groups to campaign, it must be clear that incumbent candidates are not in attendance on Students’ Union business, in their Sabbatical Officer role. This must be detailed on timetabled campaigning time. 

Students’ Union resources must not be used to aid campaigning.

Complaints 

All complaints made about candidates, campaigners, election officials or the voting process should be submitted using the official Elections Complaint Form, by e-mail, to the Deputy Returning Officer. Only complaints submitted using the official Elections Complaint Form will be considered. The complaint must be factual, contain clear evidence of a breach of the rules and highlight the election rule that has been broken. 

In the first instance the Deputy Returning Officer will consider a complaint and make a ruling within 24 hours. If it is a deemed to be a serious matter the Deputy Returning Officer may refer it immediately to the Returning Officer for consideration. 

Complaints regarding the conduct of the Deputy Returning Officer should be made in writing directly to the Returning Officer. 

Complaints must be submitted before the election count has taken place. Only complaints about the process of the count itself will be considered once the count has started, and these must be submitted within 24 hours of the results being declared. 

The sanctions available to the Deputy Returning Officer are: 

• Warning a candidate of their future conduct. 
• Taking steps to level the playing field to right an election regulation breech. 
• Fining a candidate through either reducing the amount of money they may spend, or by confiscating printed publicity material. 
• Prohibiting a candidate and their campaigners from campaigning for a period of time (up to 24 hours). 
• Banning a campaigner from the rest of the campaign (where the campaigner is not the candidate). 

In addition to all of the above sanctions, the following are available to the Returning Officer: 

• Suspending a candidate from the election pending an investigation 
• Suspending the election process pending an investigation 
• Recommending to the elections committee, and to the University, that a candidate be disqualified 
• Recommending to the elections committee, and to the University, that the election be re-run or a vote annulled. 

Candidates may appeal against decisions made by the Deputy by submitting their appeal in writing, by e-mail to elections@undebbangor.com, within 24 hours of the decision being made, following the appeal procedure detailed below: 

• Appeal is heard by the Returning Officer.
• A request for an appeal should be on the following grounds, including but not confined to: 

A review of the procedures followed at the complaint stage 

A consideration of whether the outcome was reasonable in all the circumstances 

New material evidence which the student was unable, for valid reasons, to provide earlier in the process. 

Any e-mail communication to the Returning or Deputy Returning Officer will be acknowledged via e-mail return within 24 hours, if this is not received please do not assume that we have received it - contact 01248 388000 to check.