31. Union Returning Officer and Assistant Returning Officer

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31. Union Returning Officer and Assistant Returning Officer

(a) An Honorary Returning Officer and Honorary Assistant Returning Officer, who need not necessarily be members of the Union, shall be appointed by State Council at each State Council for the conduct of any Union elections as determined by Executive that may be held within the Union throughout the ensuing year. The Returning Officer and Assistant Returning Officer shall not, during the term of their office, be employees of or the holder of any office in the Union or any branch thereof or candidates for any election within the Union other than an election for the appointment of Returning Officer for the following term, and shall not be eligible to nominate any candidate for any election under these Rules, and shall hold office until their successors are elected. If the Union Returning Officer or Assistant Returning Officer be unable or unwilling to act as or when required, the Executive shall appoint an Acting Returning Officer and Assistant Returning Officer provided that no person so appointed shall be the holder of any other office or be an employee of or candidate for any other office in the Union.
(b) The Returning Officer, or the Assistant Returning Officer under the direction of the Returning Officer, shall take such actions and give such directions as are reasonably necessary to ensure that no irregularities occur in, or in connection with any election or in order to ratify any procedure or defects in any election, and no person shall refuse or fail to comply with such directions or obstruct or hinder a Returning Officer or any other person in the conduct of any election or in the taking of any such actions.
(c) The decision of the Returning Officer regarding any matter within his/her power shall be final. The decision of the Assistant Returning Officer on any matter within his/her power shall be subject to review by the Returning Officer, whose decision shall be final.
(d) The Returning Officer shall consider all nominations and if, in his/her opinion, any nomination is defective, he/she shall immediately notify the person concerned of the defect by the most expeditious means and, where it is practicable to do so, give him/her the opportunity of remedying the defect, allowing, if practicable, at least seven days after notification.
(e) If any irregularity should occur in the conduct of an election, and in the opinion of the Returning Officer, such irregularity will affect the result of such election, then such election and each and every step taken in connection therewith shall be declared by the Returning Officer to be null and void and another election shall be held forthwith. Any person holding office immediately prior to an election which is subsequently declared to be null and void shall remain in office until his/her successor is elected.
(f) In any election each candidate shall be entitled to appoint any person, whether a member of the Union or not, to act as scrutineer at the election and may appoint a substitute scrutineer in the event that the scrutineer is unable or unwilling to act as scrutineer at the election. All scrutineers shall, in the case of a ballot, be entitled to observe the admission and the counting of votes, the conduct of and determination of the election and the declaration of the poll. In every case a scrutineer shall observe the directions of the Returning Officer who shall take all reasonable steps to enable each scrutineer to exercise his/her rights. No election shall be vitiated should a scrutineer not exercise any or all such rights if he/she had reasonable opportunity so to do.
(g) In the election each candidate shall be entitled to provide an election statement, in support of his/her candidature, not exceeding six hundred words which shall be published in the official journal of the Union prior to the issue of the ballot papers, provided that the Returning Officer may require any statement which contains defamatory words to be modified by the deletion of such words and if the candidate declines to act on the request the Returning Officer shall refuse to allow the statement to be published in the Union journal. Such election statements must be in the hands of the Returning Officer no later than the date and time of the close of nominations for the office to which the candidate seeks to be elected.
(h) In any election, no candidate shall make unauthorised use of any resources of the Union for the production and/or distribution of electoral material; no candidate shall use any logo or letterhead of the Union in electoral material; no senior officer or paid officer of the Union shall use that office to endorse electoral material on behalf of any candidate.