UHSU Elections Presentation System
University of Hertfordshire Students’ Union (UHSU) IT and Communications Manager Tom Pitt-Chambers contacted Digital Antics in 2005 to discuss the creation of software designed to receive voting data for all candidates in the UHSU elections and present bar chart graphics to a big screen.
With some of the larger universities in the UK reaching student populations of over 25,000, sabbatical election periods are always going to be stressful and time-consuming, if only for the full-time members of staff. With this in mind, many universities are now making the switch from paper voting to online voting in a bid to reduce the strain on vote counting as well as increasing election turnout.
The bespoke presentation system created for the UHSU by Digital Antics makes use of the data received from the online system as .BLT files, which is passed through the single transferable vote counting software, pSTV. The returned data contains the collated STV information as well as the candidate’s name. The software then displays the detailed information showing whether a candidate has received enough votes to meet the quota, whether they have progressed to the next round of elimination and whether they have won or lost.
The presentation software runs two signals through a dual-head setup; one for the display of the user interface, where the raw data is imported and the overall flow of the presentation is controlled and another to output to the large plasma or projection screen for public viewing.
The system is inherently adaptable to its use; background images and colours can be changed simply with the creation of a PNG image and can therefore be tailored to suit any institiution.