The official results of the UNISON SGE elections are now published on the UNISON website. Or rather, the make-up of the new SGEs [1] are. The results, if by that we mean, the scores for the various candidates, don't seem to be published anywhere.
I hope they will be soon - it's a basic part of democracy that everyone knows not just who won the elections, but how many people voted, and who they voted for.
There's been some discussion in UNISON blogs about the turnout, and specifically, the high number of spoilt papers. John Gray [2] is concerned there is a problem, but MarshaJane [3] has spotted, as I had, that the number of ballot papers 'spoiled' is much, much higher in regions where there is more than one seat to fill.
MarshaJane is right that members may have chosen, in regions where more than one seat was available, simply to only vote for a candidate in one of the elections, thus leaving the other half of their ballot paper blank (and therefore 'spoiled' for the purposes of the election). However, I find it hard to believe that this is the whole story.
In the East Midlands nearly three thousand people voted. 90% of members therefore didn't bother to vote at all. The idea that of those who are interested enough to actually vote, a third of them were not prepared to read the election statements of the candidates in both elections and make a choice in both seems unlikely to me. Yet approximately 400 members did not vote in the general seat, and 600 did not vote in the election for the female seat.
I think it is far more likely that there is a problem with the ballot paper - either members mistakenly believe that they are only allowed one vote, and have to choose a single candidate from either the General seat or the Female seat section of the ballot paper, or they fall in to the trap of thinking only women can vote in the female seat election, and only men in the 'other' seat. John Gray suggests this as an explanation in London where all the candidates for the general seat were men, but it seems less plausible in the East Midlands, since I was opposed by Ann Ashworth.
There are some other possibilities, although less likely. One is that, faced with four candidates' names on the ballot paper, and an instruction that they have two votes, some people may have voted for both the candidates in one seat, and none in the other - thus rendering their vote invalid for both. Or people may have tried to use "STV" style voting, writing a '1' and a '2' in the boxes instead of the traditional 'X'.
Most likely explanation, and the simplest, I think, is that many members simply see a list of four names on a ballot paper and vote once for the one they know / like best.
Whatever the reason, the fact that possibly a third of those members who bothered to vote in our region didn't get full value for their efforts is something which deserves analysis. I hope the members of the relevant UNISON NEC committee will decide to review the spoilt ballot papers from this election to see what, if any, can be learned, with a view to giving a clearer instruction to members in future multi-seat elections.
As a footnote, though, I was pleased to see that the turnout was a significant improvement on last year - 10% of members voting is still not ideal, but it's better than we managed last time round, and perhaps evidence that the priority our regional health committee made of seeking to increase member participation in UNISON's democratic structures is starting to filter through at the grassroots level. Well done to those branches who encouraged their members to vote, and let's aim for at least a 20% turnout in two years' time.