Until now, many flexi-job employees could not vote in university elections — now the election rules have been changed

Ann Dorthe Lehmann is an administrative officer at the Department of Management at Aarhus BSS and is employed in a flexi-job. In the last university election in 2023, in which the technical-administrative staff and scientific staff were to vote, she, like her colleagues, received a link to the digital ballot box on her work email. 

“But I couldn't log in. I thought there was a glitch in the system,” Ann Dorthe Lehmann says. 

She's sharing an office with another employee in a flexi-job position who was also having trouble getting the link to work. However, their other colleagues could easily open the link. 

The colleague told Ann Dorthe Lehmann they were not entitled to vote because they are both employed on the new flexi-job scheme with under 18.5 hours a week. According to the AU election circular at the time, employees with less than 18.5 working hours were not included in the electoral groups with the right to vote in the university elections.

“I was completely speechless. Why can’t we vote? I have been at university for 14 years and became a flexi-job employee here five years ago,” says Ann Dorthe Lehmann and continues:  

“I thought: We work here too, and we put in some good hours. Many flexi-job employees know the university well, so I think we can vote on an equal footing with full-time employees, even if we don't have as many hours,” she says.

“I thought that this wasn’t democracy. That rule was quite old, too. It didn’t make sense, either at Aarhus University or in Denmark,” Ann Dorthe Lehmann says. 

According to Ann Dorthe Lehmann, however, the flexi-job employees were not treated equally regarding voting rights. It depended on whether you were on the new or old flexi-job scheme. Flexi-job employees on the old scheme could well vote, while flexi-job employees on the new scheme with less than 18.5 hours of work per week couldn’t vote. 

According to the election secretariat at Aarhus University, this arrangement is “very likely”, but since there has been a replacement among the employees in the secretariat, they cannot confirm this.  

Support from the union representative 

Ann Dorthe Lehmann went to her union representative, Mette Tønder, who took the matter further in the system. Mette Tønder well understood why Ann Dorthe Lehmann had a sense of injustice.

“I can at any time put myself in her place. Why isn't her voice as important as everyone else's? It certainly is,” says Mette Tønder, who, in addition to being a union representative, is the department secretary at the Department of Law. 

“I looked into it, and I could see as a union representative that no flexi-job employees could vote because they didn’t have more than 18.5 hours,” Mette Tønder says and continues:

“I forwarded it to the then members of the election committee,” Mette Tønder says, stressing that the election rule has not been intended to exclude flexi-job employees. 

“This has been purely for technical reasons,” Mette Tønder says, referring to the need to avoid overlaps between election groups.

The rule has now changed

Since then, Aarhus University's election circular has been amended with effect from 2024, the Election Secretariat at Aarhus University informs. For all four election groups containing employees, it’s now valid that “employees on senior appointments and in flexi-jobs are included in the election group regardless of the number of hours”. An appendix has now also been added to the circular on how to prioritise if an employee or student can be included in several electoral groups — for example, a student who is also employed as a student assistant.

The change means Ann Dorte Lehmann and others under the flexi-job scheme will be eligible to vote in the upcoming 2027 university election, in which academic staff and technical and administrative staff will be voting. A change that also applies to employees who, as a result of a senior appointment, have reduced their working hours. 

Breaking with an unjust status quo

For Ann Dorthe Lehmann, the change in the election rule is not just a technicality. It's also a break with the status quo. 

“It was weird to find that the link didn't work and think it was a technical error and then find out I wasn't allowed to vote,” Ann Dorthe Lehmann says. 

“You don't just have to accept that things are as they are. You also have to think about whether it's fair,” she said. 

“We have the opportunity to change something for the positive and update it to the year 2025, so that democracy and the AU now go hand in hand again,” Ann Dorthe Lehmann says.

This text is machine translated and post-edited by Lisa Enevoldsen.