Social media intensifies online election

13,000 undergraduate students from Multimedia University (MMU) experienced a fully online election to vote for their Student Representative Council (SRC) members recently.

The students cast their vote for one Presidential Seat, five General Seats and seven Faculty Seats at Cyberjaya, Melaka and Johor campuses simultaneously from 8.45am until 4.30pm.

MMU Student Affairs Division director Dr Abdullah Sallehhuddin Abdullah Salim said no physical banner, poster and paper-related material were allowed during the election, including during the campaign period.

“But instead, the candidates used social media, online and digital platform to promote their manifesto to voters.

“However, the presidential debates at strategic locations were still carried out to enhance the public speaking skills of the candidates as well as to win over voters,” he added.

During a two-week period, the candidates campaigned by sending their messages, manifestos and pledge via Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media and online platforms.

During the election process, the students only needed to display their student identity card to get their voting code number, then proceeded to the voting booth where the digital voting ballot was made available and they could just choose the candidates by ticking boxes shown at the laptop monitor.

At the end of the election process, Faculty of Business student Pouria Zibaei, 27, from Iran, was announced as SRC president 2018/2019. As he vowed to give the best service to the students and university, he said: “The election process was well-organised and ran smoothly as the digital election is the fastest and almost safe form of conducting elections.”

Accounting student Divahshini Manimaran, 20, who won the General Seat, said: “It was a good strategy for the Election Commission to hold the election at the Learning Point where students can make multiple votes for many of the contesting seats via the online system,” she said.

The paperless and online voting has been organised by MMU since 2003, however, this year it was intensified by the impact of social media in the students’ campaign.