The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) elections office handed out a number of warnings and violations during this year’s election, many of them concerned with social media.
In total, 10 election warnings were issued. ACT Now Carleton received two warnings, Change CUSA received three, and Your Carleton received five. Not all of these warnings resulted in electoral offences.
Fahd Alhattab, presidential candidate for Your Carleton and CUSA president-elect, was issued an electoral violation for being present with a student volunteer who was telling other students to vote for his slate during the voting period of Jan. 28-29.
ACT Now Carleton’s candidate for vice-president (student services), Roy Sengupta, was issued an election violation for distributing campaign material during the voting period.
The candidate hardest hit by election violations was Sadia Wamunya, a third-year biology student disqualified from running for vice-president (student services) on the Change CUSA slate.
“I was so shocked I was disqualified,” Wamunya said.
The CUSA electoral code states a candidate would be disqualified from running if they receive three electoral violations, which Wamunya did.
Her first violation was for wearing a Change CUSA button inside the CUSA Womyn’s Centre. The electoral code states “campaigning within the CUSA main office, the associations’ service centres or CUSA businesses” will result in a violation.
Wamunya admited to this offence, and said she forgot she was wearing the pin at the time. She added the rules about wearing campaign material during voting period are unclear.
Her second violation was for a post on Instagram contrary to the social media guidelines. The Elections Office’s decision states Wamunya posted from her personal Instagram account, not Change CUSA’s designated account, and the post did not include the election hashtag of #CUVote15.
“They said that if you repost from another account that’s okay and that’s what I did, I reposted from our account,” said Wamunya.
Her third strike was for campaigning in a CUSA office during the voting period, which resulted in her being disqualified from the race.
“I think campaigning is when you go in and say ‘vote for me,’ that’s campaigning. Sitting in the centre and having my lunch . . . I don’t consider that campaigning,” she said.
Wamunya said she had no idea she committed any violations before being notified by email of her disqualification. She said she received notice of her removal from the race after voting had ended.
“Within 24 hours, they’re supposed to tell you that you have this violation against you and you should go to the office and figure it out but that never happened to me,” Wamunya said.
Normally candidates are reimbursed 50 per cent of their campaign costs. Wamunya, however, will not be as she was disqualified from the race. She said she spent about $200 on her campaign.
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