FAQ Electoral Committee

Your council's Election Regulations describe the responsibilities of the Electoral Committee and how it is and will be composed. The Election Regulations are posted on the web page of your council and are also available from your Electoral Committee.

Officially, it is possible, the regulations do not contain any provisions on this. However, the question is whether it is a good idea in view of preventing the semblance of a conflict of interest.

It is important that elections are fair. The rules for this are laid down in the electoral regulations. The Utrecht University electoral regulations as much as possible have been drawn up by analogy with the Elections Act (Kieswet). After all, the Elections Act regulates national political elections and is, therefore, a tried and tested regulation.

Each employee and student participation body has its own electoral regulations, which are established by the Dean or Director of the relevant organisational unit with the consent of the employee participation body. However, the Executive Board has drawn up a guideline, with the consent of the University Council, so that the various electoral regulations are as similar as possible and the same agreements apply throughout the university. Within that model, it is possible for each organisational unit to make a number of choices, for example on how to deal with vacancies. These choices are made by the Dean or Director concerned, with the consent of the employee and student participation body.
 

The reference date for the electoral registers is 1 March. After that date, the registers will be adopted by the relevant Electoral Committees within five working days.

Yes, of course you can, and we encourage you to do so! You will receive an email before mid-March so that you can immediately check online whether you are listed in the register. You can also contact your Electoral Committee to view the entire register.

This may either be an error or you may not be eligible to vote. You can read the voter eligibility requirements in the regulations. Examples of groups that are excluded are:

• External students and course participants of non-government funded postgraduate education and contract teaching, privately financed Master's programmes, and pre-Master's programmes. Pursuant to the law, student representation is limited to government-funded programmes, which means that only students of a government-funded programme are eligible to vote.
• Student assistants are not listed in the employee electoral registers (NB they are listed in those of the employee representative advisory bodies!). They are already entitled to vote for the student delegation for the University Council or the Faculty Councils/curriculum committees.
• Only employees who have an employment contract with UU are entitled to vote. This means that temporary or seconded employees who have an employment contract with another organisation, or self-employed workers who do not have an employment contract with UU (but a contract for the provision of services) are not eligible to vote. This also applies to those who have a hosting agreement. However, staff with a zero-hours contract have an employment contact and are therefore eligible to vote (provided they meet the other criteria – consider the reference date!).

You may lodge an objection with the Electoral Committee up to and including the candidate nomination period (see also the regulations!). You may not be eligible to vote, but an error could also have been made. In the latter case, you will still be added to the electoral register.

• Since 2020, students who participate in management/board activities who do not pay tuition fees (Students who participate in management/board activities and do not pay tuition fees based on Articles. 7.47a and 7.51e WHW), and are not registered with UU, as well as students who participate in management/board activities and who do not pay tuition fees but are registered with UU are entitled to vote at UU. This is explicitly stated in the Election Regulations.
• Besides employees and students, PhD candidates with an external grant or scholarship are also entitled to vote as are PhD candidates who have an employment contract with UU. This is explicitly stated in the Election Regulations.

Firstly, please check this in your Election Regulations and also check the schedule drawn up by the Electoral Committee! The candidate nomination period (usually immediately after the adoption of the electoral registers in early March) must be announced six weeks in advance at the latest (which would be around mid-January). The Electoral Committee of the council concerned is responsible for making this announcement.

This is possible, but is subject to certain conditions. If a faculty or service department wishes to extend the candidate nomination period, it may only do so after the dean/director has made a decision to extend the candidate nomination period with consent from the representative advisory body concerned (reason: this deviates from the Election Regulations) and in coordination with the Executive Board (reason: this deviates from the guideline: the Election Regulations provide for a candidate nomination period). If necessary, the Electoral Committee may moreover also decide to determine a new voting period. However, as a result the organisational unit will have to organise various matters itself (for example, the voting app).

Yes, they must. The entire delegation will be re-elected at each election for the delegation concerned. The term of office for students is one year, and two years for employees.

Absolutely! Anyone can submit their own candidate list, whether or not with multiple candidates. It is also possible to join an existing list.

Yes, this is possible. For the sake of recognisability, it would even be favourable, for example, to participate as the Green Party in elections for various faculties/districts/delegations. You can obviously only stand for election yourself for a council (or delegation/district) for which you are also entitled to vote.

You can find information on this in the Election Regulations. You should submit a list to the Electoral Committee of the council concerned, which will provide clear information on the form and procedure on the page www.uu.nl/verkiezingen. The relevant forms can also be found here.

Digital submission is preferred because this makes it much easier for the support organisation. You can submit the candidate nomination lists to the Electoral Committee of the council concerned on the last day of the candidate nomination period at the latest.

No, this is not possible, unless an error has been made. During the candidate nomination period, you may lodge an objection against the adoption of the electoral register. See the question ‘What can I do if I am not listed in the electoral register?’ elsewhere in this FAQ list.

It is up to the candidates themselves to determine the order of candidates on the list.

Nothing has been laid down on this in the regulations, it is up to the Electoral Committee. Former council members of a party regularly take on this task for the University Council. The main thing obviously is that you need to know for certain that it is not a joke, but that it is a genuine list.

No, if a candidate list was already represented on the council concerned in the previous year, this list does not need to collect supporting signatures. This follows from Chapter 4(8) of the Elections Act (Kieswet), which stipulates that written declarations from voters that they support the list are only required for parties that do not yet have a seat on the representative body for which the election is being held.

In principle, no. The candidate lists will be checked by the Electoral Committee of the council concerned after the submission deadline. The Electoral Committee will then check whether any errors have been made and whether, and if so, when they may be rectified.

During the rectification period, (during three working days after notification of an omission by the Electoral Committee), the following omissions can be rectified:

• Incorrect name of a candidate, list, district, delegation
• Incorrect solis ID
• Missing signatures
• Missing consent forms
• Missing support forms

The following matters cannot be rectified:

• Order of list
• A candidate who is not entitled to vote cannot be replaced by a new candidate. The candidate who is not entitled to vote will be deleted from the list (and will therefore not be replaced).

Yes, if you wish to put yourself forward as a candidate again, a declaration of consent from the grant provider must be submitted again. The reason is that you could be elected to the Faculty Council for a new two-year term of office, which may have consequences for the research funded by the grant provider.

Obviously, we hope so because that means that plenty of candidates have put themselves forward! However, if there are exactly the same number of candidates (or fewer) as seats, no elections will be held.

No! This will be determined by the election results. Please also see the Election Regulations in this regard. If there are more candidates (in this case five) than seats (in this case four), a vote will be held. It is up to the voters to decide which candidates they will vote for (candidate 5 may reach the electoral threshold and be chosen over candidate 1 or 2, for instance).

No, this is not possible. All candidates have signed an irrevocable declaration that they have put themselves forward as a candidate for a council. All candidates that have put themselves forward in the correct manner must therefore participate in the elections. What is possible, however, is that an elected candidate does not take a seat on the council after all. This means that there will actually be an immediate vacancy, which according to the Election Regulations must be filled by the Electoral Committee. This is unfortunate because this frequently occurs in practice. However, there is not much you can do as Electoral Committee other than have a good talk with the candidates and point out the spirit of the regulations to them (deception of the electorate).

Yes, indeed! The right to vote (so voting) transcends the boundaries of districts, you can vote but only for a candidate from another district. This only applies to your own council or the University Council. Obviously, you cannot vote for another faculty or service organisation.

There are no provisions in the regulations on this. It is therefore up to the Electoral Committees concerned based on their responsibility for organising elections to determine the order of the lists on the ballot paper (e.g. based on the order of submission, the results of the previous elections, alphabetical, drawing lots or random).

The Election Regulations of your council state exactly how this will be resolved. The Election Regulations are posted on the web page of your council and are also available from your Electoral Committee.

Yes, but only under certain conditions and only for the staff delegation in the year in which there are no regular elections for the staff delegation (only for the student delegation because they are held annually). Please see the regulations, but an important factor, for instance, is that there no longer are any available candidates on the list of current council members. The Electoral Committee must announce this in good time (when announcing the candidate nominations at the latest). For student members, there is no option for interim candidate nominations because elections are held annually for this delegation.

If a vacancy can no longer be filled in accordance with the regulations because there no longer are any available candidates and no interim elections can be called either, a person who is not entitled to vote may possibly be added in consultation between the dean/director and the council. The right to vote is inapplicable because the person in question has not been elected democratically. However, the person added may participate ‘with an advisory opinion’ in meetings (it should be noted that this differs from the council's formal right to be consulted). NB This still means that there is an incomplete council, because the full council is not democratically legitimised. It is not desirable therefore for this situation to continue any longer than necessary. The Central Electoral Office urgently recommends using the option of interim elections if this occurs.

This is laid down precisely in the Election Regulations of your council: The term of office of the candidate elected in the interim period ends at the same time as the candidates elected in regular elections.

The regulations do not provide for this. Informally, we then advise that the councillor in question and their temporary replacement (this involves first checking whether the relevant candidate list still has available candidates, who are approached in order of the list) are free to enter into a kind of ‘gentleman's agreement’ for when the retiring member wants to take office again. However, this is not enforceable. So the situation may arise where the replacement member refuses to resign at the time the original member wishes to return.