As the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) 2016 election wrapped up, voting patterns showcased a significant rise in voters clicking the “abstain” option on their ballots in comparison to last year.
The results, released on the evening of Jan. 28, found a 33.1 per cent voter turn-out, but an approximately 275 per cent increase in voter abstentions for the position of CUSA president compared to the 2015 results. The 2015 elections saw a voter turn-out of 26.6 per cent.
Carleton students submitted 8,610 presidential votes in 2016 over the 6,811 votes submitted in 2015—abstentions amounted to 2,016 or nearly 25 per cent of the total, markedly higher than the 318, or four per cent, counted the previous year.
Carleton vice-president (student enrolment) Suzanne Blanchard said she was pleased with the rising voter turnout levels and the number of abstaining voters has not been a cause of concern as of yet.
“We look at the percentage of students that should be voting versus the number that actually are, and we’re seeing that number growing—both in elections and in referenda,” Blanchard said. “We want to make sure students, wherever they vote yes, no, [or] abstain, that they are heard. We want to see very positive student engagement and we’re seeing that.”
CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said he thinks voter turn-out might be affected by how the association has been doing as of late.
“When an organization is doing well, you actually have less engagement, because there aren’t huge issues that people feel they have to go and fight for. So they’re happy and content with what’s happening, therefore they are less likely to be involved,” Alhattab said.
“Some people also see it as a political statement, saying ‘I don’t like any of the candidates;’ the other political statement it says is that ‘None of these issues directly affect me, so I’ll abstain,’” he added.
Some, however, think the results could be a cause of concern. Former CUSA humanities councillor Roy Sengupta said he found the results troubling.
“I think the thing you’re seeing with abstentions is that people don’t actually know any more about student politics than they knew before, they aren’t any more engaged than before,” Sengupta said.
Second-year women and gender studies student Aprile Harrison said she focused on voting for the executive position that best reflected her needs, and abstained from voting for other positions.
“The issues candidates mentioned in speeches were either not relevant to me or they contradicted what other candidates in their slate were saying,” Harrison said. “I won’t vote for someone I haven’t met, and I won’t vote for someone I don’t think will do a good job.”
University ombudsman Jim Kennelly said it was hard to know exactly why students were voting the way they did, but that voter turnout has been improving as of late.
“Going from ballots to electronic has made an incredible difference. Even I’m surprised at how high the numbers are,” Kennelly said. “Maybe they just didn’t know the candidates or they wanted to vote for, say, their science rep and they didn’t vote for anybody else. To give an explanation, I think we’re all just guessing.”
Sengupta said he thinks engagement with CUSA should function more like it does in a municipal context in order to get better results.
“Democracy has to be more than that. When you talk about city council, for example—you have folks that come in to redress their grievances, to submit petitions, all sorts of things, and you never have that with CUSA council. That kind of substantial engagement with the association doesn’t exist,” he added.
