Unlike this year’s Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) elections, many students with two majors in different faculties were able to vote for council candidates in both their constituencies during the 2012 elections, due to case-by-case decisions made by last year’s chief electoral officer (CEO).
Yet in the 2013 CUSA elections, double-major students could not vote in both faculties (or constituencies) and were also unable to choose which constituency they could vote for.
The technology used during election period to determine which constituency a student can vote in is the same as that of past elections. This means double-major students should never have been able to vote in more than one faculty in other years either, according to CEO Sunny Cohen.
“There’s nothing in the system that can verify that someone is actually part of a double major,” Cohen said, explaining that the computer automatically determines which faculty is displayed.
“When you pull up a student number, it shows their name and whatever faculty they’re registered in. However, there’s never been a situation where it shows two faculties.”
Sean Finn, who served as the CEO for the 2012 CUSA elections, said he believed the system determines which faculty appears for a particular student by the number of classes they are enrolled in for each major, giving the vote to the faculty with more classes.
“If you have more FASS classes for the year or more public affairs classes, then the registrar’s office recognizes that,” he said.
But in particular cases where a student was unhappy with the faculty in which they were assigned to vote, Finn said it was up to his discretion to make exceptions, a power granted to him by the electoral bylaws.
“When a student had a problem and they voiced it to one of the poll clerks, I had instructed the poll clerks to give me a call and then I had to immediately get there or send one of my officers over,” he said.
“I would talk to the student and figure out which major they wanted to vote in and they had a choice right there.”
In some cases, Finn said he allowed students to vote in both of their faculties.
“If I had a dispute with the student and they said, ‘I’m registered in these classes and these classes and I’d really like to vote for both,’ then of course I think I came down to the conclusion that if you’re paying for both, isn’t that fair?”
Arun Smith, a double-major student who ran as a council candidate for the faculty of arts and social sciences in the last two elections, said he never went through the process last year as described by Finn.
“Last year I was able to vote for myself, [but] this year I was not,” he said. “I went to the polling station last year and there was no issue whatsoever.”
Smith said that while he doesn’t think the issue had a fundamental impact on the elections, it wouldn’t hurt to see a new election called if this issue could be sorted out soon.
“I just think it’s a process of disenfranchisement more than anything else.” Smith said. “If we were to find a way to make sure that people were able to vote in either the faculty of their choosing or in both faculties, and we were able to do that in communication with the registrar’s office over the next couple of weeks, then a fresh election is probably not a bad idea.”
But Cohen said it would be unfair in his view to give certain students an extra vote in the first place, noting that this issue affected a relatively small number of people.
“Giving students two votes just because they’re double-majors, would, I believe, be more unfair than not allowing them to vote in both,” Cohen said. “Really it was only a handful of students that were concerned. At the end of the day I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as . . . students were making it out to be.”
