Students with two majors in two different faculties cannot vote for council candidates in both their faculties in the Carleton University Students’ Association elections.
They are also not able to choose which faculty (or program, in some cases) they would prefer to vote for. For example, if a student has a double major in political science and journalism, they would only be able to vote for councillors in either public affairs or journalism.
Poll clerks use a computer system that displays only one option. It remains unclear as to how the system decides which constituency to display.
Chief electoral officer Sunny Cohen said his office was aware of this issue before the elections.
“In our discussions with [Computing and Communications Services], the double major issue came up,” Cohen said.
“We asked if the system could be changed. It was mutually agreed that overhauling the system would be near impossible given the amount of time to the elections.”
Cohen said this issue should be fixed, and that he would be bringing it up in his report after the elections.
He said he believes this does not violate the electoral code, as according to the discussions he had with Computing and Communications Services (CCS), the system had worked the same way in previous years without any issues being brought forward, and that his office had simply continued to use the same system.
Poll clerks use the student numbers of voters and a system provided by CCS to determine which constituency a voter is entitled to vote for. The CCS system, as it currently operates, displays only one of the majors of double major students.
Cohen said this was not about preventing anyone from voting, but rather an “unfortunate repercussion” of using the CCS system. He pointed out that this issue would not affect voting for executive candidates, since every student gets one vote for each executive position.
Lauren Larmour, a candidate for arts and social sciences councillor, said she could not vote for herself since she is a double-major student in political science and English. The system directed the poll clerks to give her ballots only for Faculty of Public Affairs representatives, despite her other major being English, which is in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
“If you let double majors vote, they get double the amount of votes, which isn’t fair,” she said. “At the same time they should have a say in who represents them [from their faculty].”
Larmour said she would lean towards not giving double majors a vote for each constituency, because she believes that would be unfair to other students.
Cohen said at this point, he could not change the system and the elections would have to continue with the current system. He said allowing people with double majors to vote in both their constituencies would lead to electoral violations, since his poll clerks had no other way of confirming their majors apart from the current CCS system provided to them.
