Twitter is a marvelous tool. It helped bring down North African dictators and it has been used to break incredible news stories to the world.
But unfortunately, no candidate in the 2012 Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) election is allowed to use it.
Keeping candidates from using Twitter in their campaigns hurts voters, candidates and the democratic process.
The CUSA electoral code doesn’t include a clause regulating its use. So just because of “past precedent,” candidates are kept from using a platform millions of people engage with every day. Just because no rules have been set down doesn’t mean it always has to be this way.
Facebook is permitted and regulated by the chief electoral officer. Why can’t Twitter be included too?
Twitter has become so commonplace that members of the A Better Carleton slate put hashtags on their campaign posters. They were forced to print a whole new batch of posters — minus the hashtag — after hearing about the Twitter ban.
Twitter has been a major component of the Charlatan’s coverage of CUSA for years now. In fact, the hashtag “#CUSA” was the number one trending topic in Ottawa during the night of the Jan. 26 CUSA council meeting.
If current CUSA councillors, executives and appointed officials truly want to reach out to voters with the Internet, they cannot exclude Twitter from the process.
Without Twitter, any attempt to increase voter engagement online fails before it starts.
