The 2018 Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) elections will not be postponed and the decision to introduce ranked voting will stand after an emergency CUSA council meeting was held on Feb. 5.
Emma Maddock, an engineering and design councillor, put forward a motion to push the dates of candidate “nomination, validation, blackout and voting periods” back to give more candidates an opportunity to run for a position and implement ranked voting as planned if more candidates were running.
Maddock said she has been asking students how they think the elections are going and the negative feedback pushed her to bring forward the motion.
“They don’t think that it’s fair that there’s multiple uncontested positions. They feel that the nomination period was too short and they think that this is one of the reasons there’s not a lot of people running,” she explained, showing council a list of 150 students who agreed that they want the election postponed.
James Brunet, the leader of a campaign encouraging students to vote no confidence, accused CUSA and the Elections Office of failing to sufficiently advertise the nomination period.
“I don’t think people aren’t running for CUSA because there’s no interest in running. I think people aren’t running because there was very little opportunity to run, and I really think it’s a great idea to postpone the election,” Brunet said.
However, multiple councillors said they were against the motion. Cameron Wales, a public affairs councillor, said while he agrees that advertising should be improved for future elections, the requirements of the writ were met.
“I feel as though it might be an overreach for council to postpone the elections and I also think that as a general principle, postponing an election is generally viewed as an undemocratic act and something that could be viewed negatively in the student body,” Wales said.
“I also feel that it’s undemocratic to have half of your vice-president and president positions just automatically given to the slate because nobody else knew that nominations were happening, because there was a lack of advertising,” Maddock said, adding that it’s “no coincidence” that the shortened nomination period led to less candidates this year.
Chief electoral officer Nada Ibrahim countered comments that the Elections Office did not try to advertise the election or do its job. She referenced section 7.5 of the 2018 electoral code, which states that the Writ of General Election would be dropped after the “Christmas break” and voting would occur no later than the “Winter break.”
“We presented the writ to you as council and you approved it,” she said. “To say we are not trying our hardest in putting up advertisement, we are doing that.”
Ibrahim said the Elections Office finds it unfair to postpone the election because it would give new candidates an advantage to prepare and know who their opponents are, while simultaneously punishing candidates who are already in the running and have spent time and money campaigning.
CUSA president Zameer Masjedee said that council had to make the decision independently of CUSA, which is why the current executives abstained from the vote. The motion failed with 11 against, six in favour, and six abstentions.
Ibrahim brought forward a motion to reintroduce the first-past-the-post voting system for the 2018 CUSA general elections. According to the motion, which was amended to include the option of ‘no confidence’ for all positions, the ballots would offer “yes, no, abstain and no confidence” options for uncontested positions and the candidates’ names plus “abstain and no confidence” for contested positions.
Addressing council, Ibrahim said ranked voting would not affect the outcome with only one or two candidates running for each executive position.
“We don’t have enough candidates to run a ranked voting ballot. We spoke with the ombudsman Jim [Kennelly] who’s here today, and Tyler [Hall] and they both have agreed that ranked voting does not work with only two candidates, so we’re trying to introduce this year’s ballot to be similar to last year,” she said.
Wales asked why ranked voting could not be implemented, even if it would not affect the results, because it was previously voted in by council on Jan. 23.
Deputy electoral officer Aiden Forsyth argued that because there are are so few candidates running, first-past-the-post would be simpler for students to understand, and ranked voting could be implemented in a future election if more than two candidates were running for a position.
“We just don’t want to confuse people. We want to make sure that peoplo who are going to look at the ballot, they are extremely clear on what they are voting for,” Forsyth said.
Ibrahim’s motion to reintroduce first-past-the-post failed.
An emergency motion was also created to define ‘no confidence’ and what action would be taken if the majority of a candidate’s vote was no confidence, because it was not outlined in the electoral code. The motion passed, with the decision made to consider a position vacant and to hold a byelection if ‘no confidence’ received the highest number of votes for a position.
Voting for the 2018 CUSA election will take place from Feb. 7-8.
Photo by Meagan Casalino
